Dying1
by ProWriter11
Summary: Another miniature. This time the evidence says he cannot save her. If she dies, can he survive? Rated M. GSR. Posting an episode a day. Is there possibly anyone on the planet who hasn't seen LD and DD? If so, go rent the DVDs before you read this.
1. Chapter 1

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**NOW**

Sara's eyes held Grissom spellbound as the camera moved in on her face. Those eyes had showed him so much love. They were windows to her soul. All he had to do was immerse himself in their warmth to become one with her.

And that was the problem.

Whoever was broadcasting these images knew Grissom could read Sara's eyes. Grissom would know what Sara knew, feel what she felt, hurt as she hurt.

The eyes in which he'd found so much love now reflected pain and fear, causing Grissom maximum emotional agony. The pressure in his chest and head bordered on the unbearable. His hands coiled into fists so tight he squeezed all the blood from his knuckles. He leaned back against a storage cabinet, not because he was relaxed. God, he was so far from relaxed. He and relaxed weren't on the same planet. He leaned against the cabinet because his legs wouldn't support him without help.

He felt his gut churn, but there was nothing left on his stomach to void. His friends had forced him to eat, but he hadn't held anything down in 48 hours. How could he, watching the emotion-blistering images invading the Crime Lab? He had been a virtual prisoner there through all of this, doomed to watch Sara's suffering 24 hours a day. While others fought to find her and save her, he could only offer the occasional suggestion, sift evidence, look for any kind of lead using his one fully functional eye.

He wanted to be out there, tearing Las Vegas apart brick by garish brick until he found her. But he was under medical orders and police guard and never felt so helpless.

She had been stoic for so long. So Sara-tough. So defiant.

But now her will broke. Her eyes filled with tears. Her chin dropped to her chest, and Grissom saw the tears fall away from her face. Not a lot of them. Just enough to convey her surrender to the inevitable.

When she looked up again, her eyes still showed him pain and fear, now joined by something new.

Infinite sadness.

Wherever she was, she knew he was watching all of this. She had spoken to him occasionally through this ordeal, and she seemed to know he would hear her.

So now, Sara raised her arm, seeming to want to cover the camera lens so he didn't have to watch any more. But she had no strength, and her hand fell back. The audio pickups almost didn't register her voice; it was that weak.

"Don't be sad, Gil. This isn't your fault. I cherish the time we had together. I …" She began coughing, and the blood hemorrhaging from her lungs as a deep pink froth escaped her lips and cascaded in a sickening stream down her chin and neck to her shirt. She gasped, trying to gain breath, and she failed. Her body convulsed in pain, and when she was able to look into the camera again, her fear had escalated to terror.

She knew.

She was dying.

He knew.

She was dying.

And he felt as terrified as she looked.

For he was dying with her.

He knew, when she drew her last breath, he would never draw a painless breath again. He would never want to.

All he wanted now was to hold her in his arms, to tell her how much he loved her, to assure her she wasn't alone, to feel, to absorb, the last warmth of her body.

But all he could touch of her was a cold image on a television monitor.

He had tried so hard. They all had. There was warning she would be taken. They tried to surround her. To protect her. They failed so miserably.

And when she was gone, they had bent heaven and earth to find her. They had fought so hard for her. No one took time off. When they ate, it was on the move. Whatever they needed, the money was there. Ecklie made sure of it.

Nothing mattered but saving Sara.

But, in the end, nothing mattered.

They were here.

She was there, wherever "there" was.

There were no clues. Nothing. No calls from the kidnapper. No evidence left behind.

No one had slept in three days. Grissom knew if he didn't find Sara in time, he might never sleep again.

He failed her.

He should be the one in the cage. Not Sara. She had done nothing to deserve this.

His head, his heart, cried out for forgiveness he didn't deserve.

_If there is a God, please help Sara. Please._

Grissom passed a hand over his eyes. He looked back in time to see the slackness take over her face. To hear the last ragged exhalation of breath. And to watch in abject horror as the life he lived for left her eyes. The sparkle, the warmth, the love, now gone.

And then the screen went black.

_There is no God._

Grissom's body slid down the face of the cabinet until he was sitting on the floor of the A/V Lab, his legs in front of him, bent sharply upward at the knees, his arms crossed over his chest, as if he were trying to hold himself together, quite literally. His face became mural of pain and consummate loss. Catherine was there. Brass was there. Ecklie and Nick were there. And, of course, Archie. No one spoke to him. No one put a hand on his shoulder or tried to comfort him.

He would not have heard their words. He had retreated so far into himself he could have been termed catatonic.

He would not have felt their touch. He willed himself to feel nothing. He would be just fine sitting on the cold, hard floor for as long as he lived.

As for comfort, there simply wasn't any. There can be no comfort without hope that the world would get better, easier. Grissom was well beyond the ability to be comforted, well beyond the fantasy of hope.

The Grissom they knew was gone.

Only his shell remained.

For he had lost his life, just as surely as Sara lost hers.


	2. Chapter 2

**DYING by ProWriter11**

**Chapter 2**

**72 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Grissom leaned against the frame of the door that led to Sara's home office and watched her, a wisp of a smile on his lips, a look of amusement and love in his eyes. She sat cross-legged on the floor, papers and photos spread out around her, picking up each item, assessing it and deciding whether to put it in Pile A or Pile B, the former to be catalogued and refiled, the latter to be tossed. She wore shorts and a tank top, her feet were bare, and her hair was up in a ponytail to keep it off her neck. She always seemed to know when Grissom entered a room behind her – her "Sara Sense." But her concentration on the task at hand was so focused, so intense, he was certain this time he'd gone undetected.

It was too early for her to be doing this, really. He was retiring from the Las Vegas Crime Lab, and they were going to San Francisco for several weeks before taking on new teaching and research assignments in Boston. Grissom conjured up an image of Sara, standing on the Boston Common in a winter snowstorm, bundled up in a parka, snowboots, a knit cap and mittens, catching snowflakes on her tongue, lying on the ground to make snow angels, packing handfuls of the white stuff and hurling them at him with a pretty fair pitching motion. And his smile enveloped his face. He didn't remember ever being so happy.

He didn't remember Sara ever being so happy.

They didn't have to be ready for the movers for a month. But Sara being Sara had committed every task to a master list, and had started plodding through it 10 days earlier. Grissom couldn't be certain, but for every task at the top of the list she completed, he was pretty sure two more somehow got added at the bottom.

God, but he loved her. And finally, he could accept that she loved him, and accepted and trusted in his love in return.

It had taken them long enough to get here.

He had actually left the lab for the last time almost two weeks earlier, but he remained on the payroll and, technically, he could be called back as needed. He was running through months of unused vacation and personal leave time, income that would last them well into the start of their new careers in New England. Money was not going to be a problem. Boston College had invited him to create a graduate program in forensic science, starting with entomology and forensic psychology. The position carried a slot as a tenured full professor. Ecklie had even asked him to sign a contract to return to Las Vegas to consult on cases as needed.

Sara was thinking about returning to Harvard to earn a PhD, possibly in forensic medicine, while working on a research team developing new crime-scene technology. Grissom encouraged her. She could take the course work slowly and work around her research. They would be together. On the same schedule. No double and triple shifts. Leading normal, fulfilled existences.

Life was so damned good.

Grissom had just about convinced himself he needed to walk up behind Sara, hook her under the arms and pull her to the bedroom, caveman style, when the doorbell rang. Whoever it was, his fantasy was far more important. He would get rid of the intruder quickly and refocus on Sara.

There was no intruder. No neighbor. No former colleague. No pizza delivery guy. Just an empty porch with a package wrapped in plain brown paper without writing or postmark. Grissom started to pick it up, but something stopped him. The back of his neck felt as if spiders were walking through his hair, and he always trusted those spiders.

He backed off, closed and locked the door and picked up his cell phone off the kitchen counter.

"Who was it?" Sara called from her office.

"Honey, stay there," he said. He walked to the back door and checked to make sure Hank was inside and the door was locked, feeling a little silly and paranoid as he did so. But the spiders never failed him.

He called Jim Brass.

As the two men spoke, Sara appeared at the door, her head cocked in curiosity.

"I feel a little ridiculous, Jim," Grissom was saying. "But it does look a bit suspicious."

"No, you did the right thing," Brass said. "I'll bring Greg and some equipment and be there in 30. Just sit tight and keep the house locked."

"What?" Sara said when Grissom punched the phone off.

He shook his head.

"Don't know," he said. "Somebody left a box on the porch. "Something's not right."

When Brass and Greg rolled up 22 minutes later, they were trailed by a Bomb Squad van. Grissom saw the wisdom. The squad leader, a man Grissom knew as Lt. Macy, walked to the porch and checked out the package without touching it. He returned to the van. Grissom's cell phone rang.

"Where are you and Sara?" Brass asked.

"Standing by the front door, watching."

"Get the dog and go to the farthest point in the house from where you are now," Brass said. "Macy agrees the package is suspicious. He's going to send Hal in to pick it up and move it out here into the basket. Then we're gonna x-ray it."

Hal was the robot sent in to do the jobs too dangerous to involve human personnel. The basket was a containment device in which explosives could be detonated without risk to surrounding life and property.

"Let me know," Grissom said.

He called the boxer and led the dog and Sara into the back bedroom. Sara and Hank settled in on the bed. Grissom sat in a big, overstuffed chair.

Grissom kept waiting for the concussion of a muffled explosion, so when his cell phone rang, he started.

"It's not a bomb," Brass said. "Macy says it's safe to open. You want me to bring it inside?"

"No, take it to the Lab. I'll meet you," Grissom said. "Tell Macy we said, 'thanks.'"

**70 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Grissom frowned at the box as it sat, quite unthreatening, on the layout table. He had snapped on gloves. He had taken the wrapping paper off carefully and set it aside. It was a simple brown box, devoid of any identification except for the manufacturer. He started to open it, and the spiders returned. His hands hovered over the lid, and he saw they were trembling.

He reached for his cell phone and dialed Sara.

"Sidle," she said. Calm. Using her last name by force of habit.

"Where are you, honey?"

She laughed lightly. "Home. Sitting on the floor of my office. Doing what I've been doing all morning. Why? What was in the box?"

"Don't know yet. We're just opening it. Uh, Sara, I know this sounds paranoid, but you did relock all the doors, right?"

"Um, the door from the kitchen might still be open," she said. "We never lock it because the garage doors are always locked."

"Check it now. Windows, too."

"Gil, you're scaring me. Why?"

"Because I'm scared. Please, Sara. Just do it. Humor me."

"Okay. You coming home soon?"

"Fast as I can."

He snapped the phone closed and turned back to the layout table, approaching the box as if it were a coiled cobra. The spiders just wouldn't leave him alone.

As soon as he lifted the lid, he understood. His heart leaped and lodged somewhere in his throat, cutting off his breath. His mind reeled. His head spun. He felt sweat begin sliding down his face and his spine. His knees threatened to buckle. Instinctively, he grabbed the edge of the table for support.

A miniature.

_Another goddamned fucking miniature!_

Much simpler than those that came before. Perhaps not as sophisticated. But no less horrifying for all that.

A figure sitting on the floor of a steel cage, back to the metal mesh, blood streaming from its mouth, down the neck to the clothes.

Sara's mouth.

Sara's clothes.

It could have been the same doll, bent into a different position, as the one he found under the little red overturned Mustang. But this one had no moving parts. This one had nothing even to suggest life.

As much as he heard it Grissom felt Brass wheel away from the table and make a call, his voice demanding: "Find out where Natalie Davis is. I want to know for dead certain she's still in custody. Do it now!"

Another call. "Six fully armed officers. Now!" Grissom heard his address given. "Now! I mean it," Brass said, his voice steely cold. "Yes, it is an emergency. A goddamned major emergency. Call me when they're in place."

Another call. "Sara. It's Jim. I don't want to alarm you, kiddo, but you have got to stay inside. Do not open the door for anyone, even if it's somebody dressed like a cop. I mean it, Sara. No one. You do not open the door for anyone until Gil and I get there." Pause. "We'll tell you when we get there…Yeah…I'm sorry if I'm scaring you, but this is important. Promise me, will you?" Pause. "Say it. Say, 'I promise.'" Pause. "Okay. We're not far away."

Brass put his hand on Gil's arm. "Let's move, buddy."

Grissom turned to Catherine. He did not have to ask.

"We're on it like crust on bread," she said.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**DYING**

**Chapter 3**

**By ProWriter11**

**69 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Grissom rolled his Tahoe into the garage so fast he nearly ran it through the back wall. Jim squealed up behind him in a black Ford sedan. There were four police units in the street, six cops challenging the presence here of the unknown vehicles. Brass stopped to identify himself. Grissom sprinted around the back of his SUV, barking his knee on the back bumper. He slammed through the access door to the kitchen.

_Shit! _It was unlocked. Why hadn't she done what he asked?

"Sara!" he screamed, his heart shriveling when he got no reply.

He began a room-by-room search.

"Sara! For God's sake, honey, where are you?"

No one in the living room.

No one in her office.

No one in his study. Or in the kitchen. Or the dining room. Or the half bath.

He sprinted up the stairs.

"Sara! Please. Please, answer me."

Silence.

No one in either guest room, either guest bath.

He burst into the master bedroom and heard a classic rock station blaring music from the master bath. He remembered Sara's new toy, the waterproof radio that hung from the showerhead.

"Sara! Sara!"

Somebody jerked open the bathroom door.

Sara, her skin wet, wrapped in a bath blanket, her hair dripping on her shoulders.

Grissom stood there for a millisecond, trying to remember how to breathe, trying to lower his pulse rate, trying to recall how to say a prayer of thanks.

He gave up and simply pulled her into his arms.

"Thank God. Thank God."

Sara returned the hug then pulled her head back to look at his face. She saw raw emotional turmoil there. She ran a hand over his sweat-dampened forehead, ran a hand through his matted hair, told him without words that she was fine, that she loved him.

He buried his face in her neck so he could feel the pulse there, assurance she was alive.

"Why didn't you answer me?" he asked, more frightened than accusatory. "I was searching the house for you, screaming for you. When you didn't answer, it scared me to death."

"In the shower. Didn't hear anything until you were pounding up the stairs. Then I got scared, so I didn't come out until I was sure it was you."

They held one another a few moments longer.

"What is it, Gil?" she said, finally. "What was in the box?"

He told her.

And then he felt her begin to tremble.

Or maybe it was him.

Or both of them.

**68 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

"Natalie's right where she's supposed to be, still schizophrenic, still unresponsive," Brass said. "Her doctors say she's had no visitors and no contact with the outside world by letter, phone or computer. She doesn't talk to anyone. She doesn't even sing that stupid sawdust thing any more. They're certain she couldn't have done this."

Grissom called Catherine. It was a good thing she was on his speed-dial. He had Sara's right hand wrapped up in his left and wasn't about to let go to do something as mundane as punching a number into a keypad.

"Found anything?" he asked.

"No, not really," Catherine said. "I think we need to document it and take it apart, piece by piece. Gil, is everything all right at home?"

"Yeah," he said. "I'm coming back now."

He snapped the phone shut and turned to Sara.

"I'd like your eyes and mind on this, too," he said. "But I don't want to push. I mean, uh, I don't want to ask you … I don't want to bring back …"

She put two fingers over his lips to silence him.

"I can't work the case because I'm not employed at the lab any more," Sara reminded him. "I can look, but I can't touch. And if it's too much, I can leave."

"Promise me you will, uh, leave, if it gets to be too hard?

"Yeah."

"Maybe you should bring a good book," he said. "You might be waiting in Catherine's office for me for a while."

"I could just come home," she said.

"No, not without me. You don't go anywhere without me."

She looked at him skeptically.

"Yeah, okay," he said, an acknowledgment. "So I don't want you out of my sight."

"It's nice that you care," Sara said. "Personally and professionally."

Grissom drew her into his arms again.

"Don't you ever forget it," he whispered.

Grissom was watching Sara's face closely when she first saw the new miniature. She had never seen the first one, the one that forecast her ordeal in the desert. He hadn't wanted to show it to her, and she never asked to see it. She would have been forced to examine it, of course, if Natalie's case had gone to trial, or a competency hearing, but neither event had been necessary, and Sara had been spared.

He was ready to pull her out of the layout room – carry her out, if necessary – the moment she showed the least bit of apprehension over the new model. But he saw none. Her brow knit, and she cocked her head, examining the little scene from all angles.

"Should I be put out that mine isn't as elaborate as the others?" she said with just a hint of a crooked smile.

Grissom relaxed marginally.

"Well," he said, "on the other hand, you're the only one who gotten two."

"Was the other one better?"

He didn't respond. How the hell do you evaluate whether one death threat is "better" than another?

"We have this fully documented?" Grissom asked Catherine.

"Photographs and videos," she said with a nod.

"Then let's take it apart," Grissom said, snapping on latex gloves.

First he had to dismantle the cage. It was easy enough to do. It appeared to be metal but turned out to be balsa wood painted battleship gray. The hardest part of this stage was to separate the glued parts without breaking any of the pieces of wood. Catherine and Nick did the first check on each piece, catalogued them and turned them over to Hodges in Trace.

Once the top and four sides of the cage were gone, Grissom used a scalpel and tweezers to loosen the doll from the glue holding it to the floor. He straightened the doll and laid it on the table, donned a pair of magnifiers and picked up a pair of scissors. He glanced up at Sara and shrugged.

"I'm afraid I've got to undress you in public," he said.

She smiled at him. "I'll get over it," she said.

He remembered how he'd found a partial print on the doll at the death scene of another Dell foster child, Trevor Dell. There wasn't enough print to make comparisons, but Wendy had found epithelial cells identifying the miniature killer as a woman. It helped break open the case. Maybe lightning would strike twice.

After agonizing minutes of magnified examination of the new doll, Grissom shook his head and sighed.

"Nothing."

Sara picked up the scalpel and gently tapped the floor of the dismantled cell. She and Grissom looked at one another.

"Hollow," he said and immediately set to work to get inside.

When Grissom finally lifted the rectangle of metal that represented the floor, he gasped. He felt Sara flinch and pull back. From Jim, "Oh, my God." From Catherine, "Oh, no."

The floor hid supplies for a torture chamber. Weapons called maces, with heavy heads at the end of long handles, built to deliver lethal blows. Whips. Chains. Knives. Saws. Power drills. Tree pruners. Hedge clippers. Even a chainsaw.

Grissom slammed the metal floor back over the display, jumped up and turned to find Sara. She was standing behind him, rigid.

He moved to her.

"Sara?"

She transferred her eyes from the layout table to him.

"Why?" she said. "What have I done?"

"You survived the first time," he said. "Somebody didn't like that."

He enveloped her in an embrace, a gesture meant to convey the promise that nobody would ever again get to her without going through him, and nobody would get through him.

It was, he would discover soon, a promise he couldn't keep.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 4**

**66 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Catherine had offered her office, and Grissom accepted with gratitude. He led Sara there, though she assured him she was perfectly capable of walking on her own. Greg excused himself and came in to work at the Gevalia coffee pot Catherine had added to her new office décor.

"My special stash," Greg said. "I've told everyone the pot is yours and not to touch. I'm leaving the bag here, in case you want to make more."

He turned the pot on and walked over to the sofa, where Grissom and Sara sat, holding hands.

"If there's anything either of you needs, I'm the first one you call," he said. We're all going to be working on this. We'll find out who sent it. And we'll find out where he is. We'll get him."

Grissom smiled tightly. Sara's thank you was warmer.

"If you're curious, ask me anything," Grissom said to Sara as he poured the coffee into ceramic mugs when the brewing finished.

"About what?"

"About the desert. About the first miniature. About catching Natalie and me almost shaking the life out of her while she sang some sick song that seemed to be about her dead sister."

"Why'd you do that? Grab her, I mean."

"Because she wouldn't tell me where you were."

"You assaulted her?"

"I guess technically it was battery, yeah. Jim had to pull me out of the interrogation room." He looked at her oddly. "I figured somebody'd told you about it."

She shook her head. "Nick said you were flying around, working yourself to death and giving orders like a man possessed, that even the sheriff and Ecklie didn't want to be in your crosshairs that night. I didn't ask for any details, and nobody volunteered any."

"Oh."

"I still don't want to know about any of it, really," Sara said. "I remember when she was judged criminally insane. Her lawyer waived a competency hearing, and she was sent away based on the unanimous findings of three psychiatrists. I was really relieved when I didn't have to go through a hearing and see all that … stuff, live it all over again."

She was quiet for several minutes.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

Sara got up and moved to fill her coffee cup again.

"About how I'm glad I didn't know back then about the miniature and the Mustang and the motive. It was just something that happened. I dealt with it as it came. It didn't feel as personal as it does this time."

Sara sat down, and Grissom saw that she was trembling. He took the coffee mug from her and put it on a table. He stretched out on the long sofa and drew Sara down on top of him, half lying on his chest, half by his side. He began stroking her hair and kissing her lightly. He felt her relax. Five minutes later he heard her breathing deepen, and he knew she was asleep.

He closed his eyes and tried to join her, but the effort was hopeless. He couldn't shut out the images Sara never saw: the shock of finding the miniature in his office, then the Mustang buried under two tons of wet sand with Sara's utility vest, a dead half-buried body that might have been Sara, Sara without a pulse, moments from death under the desert sun, Natalie's empty eyes.

It had been a nightmare, and he was living it again.

**64 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Sara slept nearly two hours. Grissom was grateful that she slept and grateful she was awake now. His back and neck had grown stiff. His right arm had gone to sleep.

Catherine and members of her team had come in at intervals to give him whispered reports on their progress in finding whoever built the new miniature, but it always boiled down to nothing.

"How're you feeling," Grissom asked Sara as she opened her eyes.

"Good," she said. "How long did I sleep?" A rhetorical question. She looked at her watch. "Two hours? Oh my god. Every nerve in your body must be numb." She struggled to sit up but couldn't find the right leverage. She was wedged between Grissom and the back of the sofa.

"Are you going to help me?" she asked, finally.

"Nope," he said with a grin. "Having you wiggling around on me feels pretty good. It's getting my blood flowing again."

She slapped his arm and rocked herself hard, over his groin and onto her feet.

"Ow! _Shit! _Oh, damn, that hurt, Honey," he said, as he rolled onto his side and pulled his knees to his chest, groaning. "Sara, you don't do that to a guy."

"Just trying to make sure all your nerve endings had come back to life," she said.

"You could have just asked," he said, struggling to a sitting position.

Catherine chose that moment to enter her office. She found Sara standing by the sofa with a half smile on her face and Grissom doubled over with his hands somewhere between his legs.

"Am I interrupting?" she said.

"God no, Catherine," Grissom said, his voice tight. "It's going to be hours before I'm capable of doing anything you could possibly interrupt. Shit!"

Catherine looked from a grinning Sara to a pained Grissom and back.

"I don't even want to know," she said.

"What have you got?" Grissom asked.

"Nothing," Catherine said. "Less than nothing. Look, I'm going to suggest you guys go home. There's nothing you can do here. Gil, we're going back to that friend of yours, Art Schuster, who owns the hobby shop. He's going to try to help us run down who might have been able to cast those miniature tools. He's good. He says most people buy their miniatures, and he knows almost everybody in the region who casts and builds their own. We'll let you know if we find anything."

Reluctantly, Grissom nodded. He really had no standing in the Lab any longer, no valid argument to stay. He knew Catherine would be as good as her word and call as soon as she learned anything. They wouldn't be cut out of the investigation.

"Good," Catherine said. "Brass already called for a police deployment at your house. They'll be in place by the time you get there. And if you wait in the lot for a few minutes, there will be a SWAT unit to escort you home.

"A SWAT unit?" Sara said.

"Yeah. You need the best when you're on the move."

**x x x x x x x**

Gil and Sara sat in his Lexus, listening to an iPod mix of John Mayer, Richard Marx and Bill Withers, with a bit of Leonard Cohen thrown in. Ecclectic to be sure, but very easy on the mind. It was a beautiful Las Vegas evening, and he had the car's engine running to draw in the cool, fresh desert air while waiting for the SWAT team to appear.

Sara had apologized for hurting him earlier; it really had been accidental. He knew that, and was right in the middle of telling her what sexual torments she could expect when he evened the score at home in about 20 minutes. He had just begun a graphic description when he saw a shadow outside the car.

He had his Glock half out of the holster when something heavy shattered the rear window and something hard hit the floor behind his seat.

About two seconds of ghostly silence followed.

And then an event he wouldn't be able to recreate fully no matter how long and hard he tried.

He heard Sara say, "Gil?"

The world turned a blinding hot-white.

The blast noise shattered the rest of the car windows and deafened the two occupants.

Because of the close confines in which the blast had gone off, both lost consciousness immediately.

Two male hands opened the front passenger door and dragged Sara out. She went up and over a shoulder and into a nearby white van without windows. The van squealed away, seconds before the SWAT van arrived.

Grissom had been blown forward. He hadn't yet put on his seatbelt, and his body lay twisted across the center console of the Lexus. He had hit the gear-shift lever so hard it cracked two ribs, and blood flowed freely from a gash on his forehead, where he smacked into a control knob for the stereo. Flying glass had penetrated every inch of his exposed flesh, including a deep puncture of his left eye.

When Jim Brass ran up to the car seconds later, it appeared a scene from hell, and he quickly realized it was.

Sara was gone. No one had seen her taken. One of the SWAT cops saw a windowless white van speed out of the parking lot as they sped in, but he'd paid little attention since he was still a few seconds from realizing something had gone very wrong with the people they had come to protect.

Grissom was badly injured.

The nightmare was escalating.


	5. Chapter 5

**62 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

The Crime Lab investigators had serious work to do, so Brass was designated to wait at the hospital with Grissom. The initial reports out of the ER were encouraging. There was no danger the cracked ribs would separate and damage any vital organs. The head wound had cost him a lot of blood and inflicted a minor concussion but wasn't life-threatening. He had been taken to surgery to repair his left eye and to check his hearing.

An hour in, Brass's cell phone rang. It was Catherine.

"The weapon was an M84," she said.

"A stun grenade?" Brass said. "In a car? Jesus, that's massive overkill."

"That's why you need to be sure the doctors know about Gil's otosclerosis," she said. "His surgery corrected it, but god knows how much a concussive blast that size could set him back. The M84 is rated at about 180 decibels. Anything above 85 can cause permanent deafness. A 12-gauge shotgun discharged next to your head is quieter than a stun grenade."

Brass flinched. "I checked, and the otosclerosis history is in Gil's medical record. He had the surgery here." He paused, trying to pull up some bit of knowledge. "I wonder if the flash could have done permanent damage to their vision. If memory serves, it produces up to eight-million candela, about the same as 67,000 100-watt lightbulbs. It activates every photosensitive cell in the retina. Discharged in an amphitheater it's enough to cause temporary blindness in everyone there. What does it do in the close quarters of a car?"

"This isn't something Gil needed on top of the eye injury," Catherine said. "You hear anything from the surgeons yet?"

"Nothing, but it hasn't been that long. The eye injury by itself was going to take a while to assess and treat, and there's all that other glass they have to pull out of him. Plus the ribs and the head wound. Is there anything on Sara?"

"No. We're trying to backtrack the grenade. It didn't fragment – well, they're not supposed to, but you never know. The serial number was etched off, but I'm working at restoring it."

"You don't just pick up an M84 at the grocery story," Brass said. "Military or SWAT are the obvious sources."

"Yeah, I'll get back to you," Catherine said. "And you call me as soon as you know anything about Gil."

"Hey, Cath," Brass said, "I don't have to tell you, time is critical for Sara. I'll leave here to help if there's anything you need. Gil would want me to."

"I won't take you off my speed dial," she said.

**x x x x x x x**

Sara had become semi-conscious while still in the back of the van. Her vision was blurred, as though she were looking through gauze. She could make out her changing surroundings behind the gauze, but the image in the foreground was static, superimposed on everything else. She saw Grissom's face, alarmed, turned to the rear of his car. It was the last image she had seen before … what? What had that explosion been? It was as if that last glimpse of Grissom was burned into her retinas.

Well, of course it was. They must have been the victims of a flashbang, a stun grenade. The retinas tended to retain the last image that hit them before the flash. The effect would wear off eventually. A flashbang also would explain why she could barely hear the road noise, though the vehicle in which she found herself obviously was moving. Her hearing impairment, too, was temporary. The headache was the worst of all. It made her dizzy and nauseous.

She worried about Grissom. It hadn't been that long ago he'd told her about his ear surgery years before. It came up during a discussion about starting a family. It was one of his concerns. The otosclerosis was hereditary. It had robbed his mother of her hearing. Sara argued that since it could be corrected with early detection and surgery, it shouldn't be a factor in their decision about children. Something interrupted the conversation, and they'd never gotten back to it.

Sara wondered if they ever would.

She prayed the flashbang hadn't reversed the outcome of his surgery.

The thought brought her back to her own predicament.

Sara let herself understand that the person driving this van was, in all probability, the same person who built the miniature. And wherever the van stopped, there would be a cage waiting for her. And death.

Unless she could cheat it. Again.

She found herself strangely calm. After she survived Natalie Davis, she was terrified of having to endure a trial or even a competency hearing, of being forced to confront Natalie again. Perhaps it was a benefit of leaving Las Vegas for a while, burying her past, that gave her the strength she found in herself now. Wherever it came from, she knew she would need it.

Her shoulders ached, and she realized her hands were bound behind her back, just as they had been in Natalie's trunk. Her feet were bound, as well. She struggled, but found no slack in her captivity. The fight tired her and escalated her headache. She stretched out to rest and lost consciousness again.

**60 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Grissom had been in the OR for more than three hours before the surgeon reappeared. He looked grim, and Brass hated grim, especially on the faces of doctors trying to save his friends. This doctor's surgical mask already hung slack at his neck. As he walked toward Brass, he ran his hand up his forehead and pushed off his scrub hat, stained with perspiration.

"Are you Jim Brass?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I'm Owen Richland. I'm the ophthalmologic surgeon in charge of Dr. Grissom's eye injury."

"How'd it go?" Brass said.

"We had a lot to do in there," Richland said. "The head wound, all the glass, the ribs. We pretty much got it done, and the prognosis is mostly all good. The hearing and the vision were the biggest concerns. Dr. Grissom experienced no permanent damage to his hearing, or so says the surgeon who dealt with that issue, the same doctor who operated on him to correct the otosclerosis. Concussion grenades are incapacitating because they affect the fluid in the semicircular canals of the ear. The otosclerosis involves abnormal bone growth in the middle ear. One has nothing to do with the other. His surgery fixed the bone problem and this incident didn't damage the repairs. So he's fine in that regard. His hearing should be normal as soon as he wakes up in recovery.

"But I'm afraid there's a chance he's going to lose sight in his left eye permanently."

"Oh, no," Brass said. He sagged against the wall and felt sick to his stomach.

"We got the pebble of glass out, but it penetrated the cornea and the lens going in and caromed around in the vitreous humor pretty good, damaging the retina. The lens we can replace with a prosthesis when he's strong enough. It's a very common procedure. Many people with cataracts have it done eventually. Depending on how things go, the cornea could require a transplant from an organ donor, if we can find one. The fact that Dr. Grissom has near-perfect sight in his right eye will place him well down the recipient list, I'm afraid. There is no telling when, if ever, he might qualify for a transplant.

"The retina is an immediate and critical problem. His became detached. I went in and reattached it, actually buckled it in place. It remains to be seen if the surgery is successful. The good news is the shape of his eyeball puts him in a fairly low percentile in terms of risk of another detachment. If my handiwork holds, and if the cornea heals, he'll be fine. If the reattachment fails, a cornea transplant will be moot. His vision will be lost permanently. If the retina heals but the cornea doesn't, then the transplant is his only option, and as I explained, it's not a good one. While the eye injury is not life-threatening, Dr. Grissom would have to face the question of whether he can continue to do his job with just one eye."

Brass shook his head slowly and felt increasingly glum.

"If Gil can't continue working," he said, "then you might as well let him die."

"I hope you're being melodramatic," Richland said. "There are plenty of uses for skills like his that don't involve forensics field work."

"What about the head wound and the rest of the glass?"

"Not terribly serious. As you know, auto glass pebbles when it's broken. Other than the eye, most of the glass injuries are little abrasions, scratches. There were a few penetrations, but nothing big, nothing deep. The head wound bled a lot, as those things do. There might be a minor concussion. No permanent damage. We gave him two units of blood during surgery, and everything looks good but the left eye."

"That's a big but," Brass said. "When's he going to be able to leave here?"

"I'd like to keep him at least the rest of the night for observation. If all is well for the next day or two, we can release him. But he has to stay quiet, and there should be someone with him. I will need to see him every day for the next week or so, depending on how the eye progresses."

"And good luck to us all on that," Brass said. "He told Richland of the events leading up to Grissom's hospitalization. "Quiet is one thing Gil's not good at. He's going to insist on being involved in every aspect of this investigation."

"If that's the case, then I won't release him," Richland said. "If he signs himself out, the consequences will be his responsibility. I really hope it doesn't come to that."

"Yeah," Brass said.

He sat down in the waiting room again, hoping to see and talk to Grissom before going back to work. Gil would be angry and terrified over the threat to his sight, though not nearly as angry and terrified as he would be about Sara's welfare.

An orderly approached Brass and handed him an envelope.

"This was left for you at the nurse's station," the young man said and turned away.

Brass opened the envelope. He would kick himself later that he hadn't put on a pair of latex gloves, but he couldn't have imagined the content:

"_**Capt. Brass,**_

"_**There will be news on the fate of Sara Sidle broadcast over the closed-circuit channel at the Crime Lab beginning precisely at noon Tuesday. You should be certain Dr. Grissom is there to watch the broadcast. It will be continuous for 48 hours. You won't want to miss a moment."**_

Half way through the reading, Brass whipped out a handkerchief and used it to hold the paper. Try as he might, he couldn't get out of his head the image of Nick Stokes in a glass coffin.

With his free hand, he dialed Catherine.

"Get somebody over here with an evidence bag now," he told her. "Our perp has made a move."


	6. Chapter 6

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 6**

**59 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

When Sara awoke the second time, she was in the cage. The cage she had seen before only in miniature, on the layout table at the Crime Lab, the cage with the terrifying threat hidden under the floor that had so upset Grissom and terrified her.

Sitting on the floor, back to the mesh and bars. Her bindings were gone. She was free to move. The only problem was, she had nowhere to go. She reached out and knocked on the floor. Did it sound hollow? She wasn't sure. She got up and looked for a door, a hatch, anything that would indicate how she was put in here and how she might get out. There was nothing she could find, but she couldn't yet quite bring the world into focus.

Then bright lights winked on. Her eyes, sensitive from the flashbang, squinted. She put a hand up to shield herself from the glare and saw someone standing there, just outside the cage.

"Hello, Sara," he said. "Welcome to my place." His voice sounded unnatural, as if it were being electronically disguised. And she saw he was wearing a full mask.

"What do you want with me?" she said.

"I think you know. Unfinished business, and all that."

"Whose unfinished business?"

"Do you have to ask?"

"You're a friend of Natalie Davis?"

"A friend? Interesting question. Do you consider yourself a friend of Gil Grissom?"

"Well, yes. Of course."

"But it doesn't stop at friendship for the two of you, does it?" he asked.

Sara said nothing.

"Ah, forgive me," he said. "You're married now."

"Yes."

"So is Natalie."

The look on Sara's face was one of total shock. "You're Natalie's husband?"

"I'm not saying that, but, well, would it surprise you to think that Natalie might have a husband?"

Actually, Sara thought, that would explain so much: How Natalie managed to have access to a car without a driver's license. How she managed to jack up the Mustang, get Sara's body under it and lower the car again. How she completed the miniatures of her killing fields so quickly.

She had help.

But no one ever mentioned finding a marriage record for her. Did anyone look?

"Did you have a formal wedding?" Sara asked.

"None of this matters," he said. "I'm going to finish what Natalie started. For her. Using you to fix Grissom. Natalie was a good woman until your Grissom destroyed her. Now I'm going to destroy him."

Sara started to argue, and thought better of it. Whoever this was clearly had lost touch with reality. And she couldn't think straight enough at the moment to deal with him coherently. The high-intensity lights and her fears for Grissom were playing hell on her headache.

"Do those have to be on?" Sara asked the man.

"Oh, yes, they do," he said. "You see, we will be streaming video back to the lab, to your Grissom, so he can follow what's happening to you. We need the lights so he can see events develop. I hear he lost an eye in the explosion in his car. Pity. But all the more reason to light this scene brightly for him."

_Lost an eye? No, this can't be happening. This is like Nick's kidnapping and my kidnapping all rolled together. I don't believe it. Gil can't handle this. Not again. Not this soon after losing Warrick. I have to get out of this._

Now the man was inside the cage. The entry was seamless and invisible unless you knew where to look for it. Sara made him to be maybe two or three inches under six feet, slim build. His eyes were blue. She couldn't see his hair for the mask. When he talked, his lips seemed to turn into a sneer.

"We're going to begin shortly, Sara. By the time we're through, your Grissom might be wishing he's lost the sight in both eyes."

**58 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Grissom had been moved from post-op recovery to a private room and quickly showed signs of waking up from the anesthesia. Brass insisted on being there. For one thing, Grissom's hands were secured to the bed, not because anyone feared violence from him, but because his doctors didn't want him touching the bandage patch over his wounded eye. Dr. Richland had left orders to be called as soon as it appeared Grissom was waking up, and the duty nurse did so a little before 2 a.m. Tuesday morning.

When Richland entered the room, he heard Brass telling Grissom what had happened to him and to Sara. He had been warned that Grissom would be difficult, that he would want to leave the hospital immediately. How soon the discharge actually occurred depended a lot on the attitude of the patient himself.

So Richland focused on Grissom, assessing him carefully. Grissom clearly was agitated, ready to jump out of his skin. If he didn't calm down, he would have to be assessed for blood pressure medication. If he didn't respond to treatment, he wouldn't be allowed to leave at all.

**x x x x x x x**

"I've got to get out of here," Grissom said. "Jesus god, how long was I out? Why the hell did you let them do the surgery, Jim? I need to be out there finding Sara. This can't be happening again. It can't. We can't fucking survive it again."

Grissom saw that Brass was simply still, listening. Grissom understood his friend was trying to let him blow steam until he quit of pure exhaustion. That made him angrier.

"Will you say something, goddamn it?" Grissom said, only then noticing the white-coated man standing by the door. Grissom gave him a one-eyed glower. "You my doctor?"

"One of them," Richland said.

"What do you want? No. Never mind. I don't fucking care what you want. I know what I want. Out of here. _Now_."

Richland took a deep breath and approached the bed.

"Dr. Grissom, I'm not going to offend you by telling you I know how you feel. I can't even imagine how difficult this is. But if you want to leave here and help your wife, you have to calm down and promise to follow a few rules."

"Rules? Fuck your rules. My wife's life is at stake here. I don't give a damn what happens to my eye. Sara is the only thing that matters right now." Grissom heard his voice rising and recognized he was using language he rarely employed with anybody else in proximity.

_Well, if they don't like "fuck," then fuck 'em._

"Gil, listen to me." Grissom turned back to look at Brass. "The kidnapper sent a note to me. At noon Tuesday, today, he – or she – is going to start a broadcast about Sara. It will feed into the lab over the closed-circuit channel. If you want to be there to see it, you've got to calm down, do what the doctors tell you and agree to what they say you can and can't do. Otherwise, they're not going to agree to release you, and I'll put my two biggest, toughest uniforms on that door to make sure you don't check yourself out. Am I clear?"

_Like Nick._

Grissom felt all the fight leak out of him. He felt his face crumble. His body began to tremble and he fought to put down the stinging behind his eyes.

He saw Richland bend down and look at him kindly.

"Actually, Dr. Grissom, if you want to let go a little, don't hold back. Tears are good for the injured eye."

Grissom was so tired. His head fell to his chest, and he couldn't raise it again.

Richland took a blood pressure cuff off the wall and wrapped Grissom's left arm. He prepared his stethoscope and pumped up the cuff beyond the point of pain. Gradually the pressure eased and Richland sighed.

"Too high," he said. "Not surprising. We're going to put you on some meds temporarily. Then I suggest you try to get some sleep. We'll assess the eye in a few hours. If you've calmed down, and if the bp is lower and stable, we can think about releasing you to Capt. Brass's care. It's at least 24 hours earlier than I'd like, but I understand your feeling of urgency. If we do let you go, you may go to the lab and help, but only as long as you are sitting down or lying down and staying quiet. Let others do the running around. You use your brain. Now, do you want a sleeping pill for tonight?"

Grissom said no. "Need a clear head."

"Then do the best you can on your own. We're going to brace your head to keep it as still as possible overnight, and I'm afraid we're going to have to keep your hands restrained so you don't try to rub your eye by mistake."

"How long do I have to wear the bandage?"

"At least for the next 36 hours. If all is well, we'll remove the patch and give you a plastic eye cap to tape on for a week or so. I'll be in to see you around 7 a.m. We'll be able to do a better assessment then."

Grissom was too exhausted to argue. He promised to rest, but he knew he wouldn't sleep. Not until he had Sara back.

Brass sat with him until the blood pressure meds showed up. He wanted to be sure Grissom took them. He left only after Grissom insisted.

"We need every brain and set of eyes we can get out looking for Sara," he said. "Please, Jim. Go to the lab and help Catherine. Call me if you find out anything. I have nothing to do but lie here and think. Help me be productive. Please. I really, really need to be doing something."

"And I need you to do something, in return," Brass said. "It's after 2 a.m. We have 10 hours until the broadcast starts. If we're going to get you to the lab by noon to help us through this, you are going to have to calm down and rest until the doctor comes back. You with me on this, Buddy?"

Grissom simply nodded and closed his eyes.

He heard Brass leave. He knew he was alone.

He thought about the new miniature. He thought about the explosion. He thought about Sara.

How could he have been so stupid? If they had waited a few minutes inside the lab for the SWAT team to show up, none of this would have happened. It was his fault. He remembered he wanted a few minutes alone with her. In private. If their life were to become public again, he wanted a few moments to kiss her in private, to tell her how much he loved her and cared for her without bodyguards looking over their shoulders.

The weight of the guilt on his chest threatened to suffocate him.

He had to find Sara.

Getting to the lab today was not an "if" in his mind.

It was a certainty.


	7. Chapter 7

**57 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Grissom tried unsuccessfully to sleep and fight off heart-breaking mental images of what full-size, real-life instruments of torture found under the floor of the miniature could do to a human body.

To Sara's body.

None of that horror was far from the minds at work in the Crime Lab, either.

Everyone had rolled out: Brass, Catherine, Nick, Greg, Sophia, Bryce, all the lab rats, even Ecklie.

"What are we doing to ID that white van?" Ecklie asked.

"Nick has started going through registration records for every model of every windowless van registered in Clark County," Catherine said. "It's a needle/haystack sort of thing, but maybe we'll get lucky. I've asked Tom Kelly, the SWAT member who noticed the white van, to submit to hypnosis, to see if we can draw out any memories." She hesitated. "It's going to cost some money, Conrad."

"Whatever it takes," he said. "Just get it done."

"What good will hypnosis do?" Greg asked.

"The human brain has a tremendous capacity to absorb knowledge, even though at a conscious level we don't realize it," Catherine said. "You can be asleep, even in a coma, and the brain will process what's going on around it, within its sensory range. Kelly probably noticed some things about the van he doesn't realize he noticed. The hypnosis will help us help him recover some of those images and, with luck, give us some clues."

"And how long will it take?" Ecklie said.

"Both Kelly and Dr. Frank Canin are on their way in," Catherine said. "I'm hoping a couple of hours, tops."

"While we're waiting," Brass said, "I'm gonna grab Greg and Sophia and pitch in with Nick on those registrations. As soon as you get anything from Kelly that might be useful in narrowing the field, let us know."

"Who's sitting with Grissom?" Ecklie said.

"No one right now," Brass said. "He was adamant that he was okay, and the whole team should stick with this investigation. Right now, he doesn't care if he keeps or loses his eye. He isn't thinking about anything but Sara. Frankly, I was concerned he'd get even more agitated if we didn't do as he asked. The duty nurse and the doctor both have my phone number if something comes up. I'll head back in time to be there with the doctor does morning rounds."

**55 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

_This is such a cliché, Grissom thought as he walked through the heavy wooden door of the old Gothic house and heard the hinges creak, sounding like the squeal of small, frightened animals. Just before he stepped across the threshold he looked up through the barren branches of gnarled old trees and saw a sliver of cloud scud across a full moon. The only thing the cliché needed to polish it off was a bunch of bats flying at his face and clawing at his hair._

_Well, he wasn't actually inside the house yet, so maybe the bats were waiting._

_He liked bats, actually. What were they doing in his nightmare?_

_Once he was in the expansive foyer, the door creaked again and slammed shut behind him. He hadn't touched it. There was no wind. This was ridiculous. Even for a cliché. After all, this nightmare wasn't about ghosts._

_Unless they were Sara's ghosts. The old ones she'd buried. The new ones yet to come._

_He reached to his hip, looking for his Glock. It wasn't there. Of course not. He hated carrying the gun and did so only under duress. Somehow, he thought, he should have made an exception this time._

_Then again, he'd had it with him recently and it hadn't done any good. Somebody took Sara, anyway._

_He wandered from room to room, seeing only by the ambient moonlight filtering through the old, yellowed lace curtains. He couldn't remember why he'd come here._

_The hairs on the back of his neck bristled, a warning from his spiders. The tickle was followed almost immediately by a woman's scream. The sound carried so many messages: confusion, pain, terror. Whoever uttered the scream was under some serious duress. Grissom listened hard. Even after the scream died, there was whimpering. And then words, "Please. Stop. No more."_

Sara's voice!

_Where are you? What's happening?_

_Another scream, weaker this time but no less the result of emotional and physical agony._

_Sara, keep talking. I'll find you._

_Another scream, heart-shattering. It sounded as if it had come from the parlor in front of him. Unmindful of anything but Sara's welfare, he bolted into the room._

_It was empty._

_But a door stood open leading to a flight of stairs. _

_Another scream from the bottom of the stairs._

"_Sara!"_

_Grissom took the stairs three at a time. He stumbled once and caught himself on the handrail. The stairwell was incredibly long, incredibly steep. He couldn't see the bottom of it._

_Down, down, he ran, calling Sara's name, the sweat of fear and exertion running down his face and leaking through his shirt._

_There had to be a bottom to these stairs, an ending._

"_Sara! Sara!"_

_He listened and heard nothing but the sound of his footfalls as he pounded down the stairs and then, seemed to come from right next to him, a terrified, heart-rending scream and Sara calling his name._

"_Gil, help me. He's killing me."_

_Sara!"_

_Another misstep. This time there was no handrail to grab. It had disappeared. Grissom fell, bouncing down the steps, his head hitting the wall. The fall spared no part of him: knees pounded, ankles sprained, one broken maybe, a shoulder separated, ribs cracked, an arm broken, three vertebrae crushed, neck wrenched._

_He came to rest at the bottom of the steps, his chest heaving, no part of him not hurting. He could barely move. He could barely see through the blood that flowed into his eyes. But he could see well enough to spot Sara, stripped naked, chained face forward into a brick wall._

_He groaned, not for himself but for her. Third-degree burns covered he back, her buttocks and her thighs. The man who stood beside her, back turned toward Grissom, was holding a crowbar in left hand. The tip glowed orange-red hot, probably cooling from white-hot._

_White-hot. The color of an explosion. _

_He tried to crawl to Sara._

"_Please," he said to the man whose face he couldn't see, the man who slid the poker back into the pan of fire, reheating it to_

_White-hot._

"_Please, don't hurt her any more," he begged. "Take me."_

"_I don't think so, Mr. Grissom."_

_He knew that voice._

_He tried to crawl to her._

_He was stopped by a wall of glass._

"_Please," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper now. "Please."_

_The man pulled the crowbar from the flames. It was_

_White-hot._

_He laid the metal between her shoulder blades._

_Grissom's scream and Sara's came together._

_All he could see was_

_White-hot._

"_NO!"_

**x x x x x x x**

"Dr. Grissom, relax," a man's voice said. "Dr. Grissom, you have to wake up."

The white-hot disappeared and beyond he saw a hospital room and his surgeon. Then the white-hot returned. The doctor was testing his pupil response with a small, intense flashlight.

When Dr. Richland pulled back, a nurse stepped in with cool wet cloths. She wiped Grissom's face and neck, carefully staying away from his injured eye.

"You were having a nightmare," Dr. Richland said. "Your respiration and heart rate went through the roof." He glanced at the monitors. "Better now. But you need to relax."

"Are you going to use this to keep me here?" Grissom said, trying to sound defiant.

"No," the surgeon said. "After what you've been through, the aberration would have been no nightmares. I'm concerned about your pulse and bp now, but they are coming back down nicely."

"So I can leave?"

"I said I'd be back for morning rounds. We'll see then. In the meantime, try to relax. I know it's hard, but you have to. Deep, slow breaths, Dr. Grissom."

Grissom tried. He really did. But sleep wouldn't come again, and that made him all the more tense. He knew what Sara had meant so long ago about her fear of the nightmares when she slept. They both had gone through through it after the Natalie Davis episode. And now it was happening again.

Grissom remembered too many details of the nightmare just interrupted. It fit almost too well with the miniature back at the Crime Lab.

_Oh, God, Sara. I can't lose you again._


	8. Chapter 8

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 8**

At the same time Grissom was trying desperately to relax, Catherine was walking down a Lab hallway talking to Tom Kelly and Dr. Frank Canin.

"You did great, Tom," she told the SWAT member. "This should help."

"I hope so," Kelly said. "We all just feel so totally like crap that we got there too late. Grissom and Sara deserved better from us."

"I don't think either of them would agree with you," Catherine said. "It totally wasn't your fault."

"Do you think my memories will be admissible?" he asked. "This sick SOB really needs to go away for a long time."

"They should be. Dr. Canin?"

"I don't see why not," the psychiatrist said. "We did it by the book written in countless court hearings over the years."

"Even if it isn't admissible, your memories are going to help us find our missing CSI, and right now, I'd settle for that," Catherine said. "I'm sorry, but I've got to run."

She shook hands with both men and left them near the reception desk.

Greg spotted her more upbeat persona as soon as she walked into the break room.

"We have Tom Kelly on audio and video remember things he didn't even know he knew," she told the team members there, including Ecklie. "It wasn't exactly a windowless van. The two back, side-hinged entry doors had windows, as well as the cab, of course. There were no windows on the side. The kicker was the shape of the van, high and narrow. Ring any bells?"

"Hydrogen-powered," Nick said. "I never understood why they had to have that configuration."

"Doesn't matter," Catherine said. "Kelly also remembered an emblem on the van's hood. It was a Mercedes."

"I didn't know Mercedes made a hydrogen-powered van," Greg said.

Nick was clicking away on his laptop. "Yep, here it is. The Sprinter. How many of those could there be in Clark County? Come on, Greg, you're with me."

Brass came in and caught the last part of the conversation.

"I'm glad SWAT came up with something," he said. "Their supervisor just called to say their inventory of flashbangs is fully accounted for. Still waiting to hear from Nellis. They have to get permission from Washington to talk to us."

Ecklie stood. "I need to go over and look in on Grissom. This Mercedes thing will give him a little hope. Call me, Catherine, with anything. I mean _anything._"

"Tell Gil I'll be by in a bit," Brass said, looking at his watch. "His doctor's supposed to be there to evaluate him at 7 a.m. I want to be there a little early in case Grissom's needs some emotional support. God help us if the surgeon won't let him go. He'll take the hospital apart in tiny pieces. Whatever you do, Conrad, don't upset him."

**53 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

It was just after 7. Ecklie had come and gone. Brass had been waiting with Grissom for 20 minutes. Still no sign of Dr. Richland. Grissom was growing more agitated by the minute.

"Gil, calm down," Brass said. "The doctor knows what's at stake. He'll be here. We've got almost five hours."

"Does Archie have everything set up?"

"He was almost done when I left. Just finishing the setup on a system that might be able to track the origin of the closed circuit signal."

"Did he test it?"

"That's what he was doing, Gil. And Bobby's helping. He's pretty good with electronics, too."

"Ecklie said you ID'ed the van. Was he being straight with me?"

"We ID'ed the nameplate. Nick and Greg are running every Mercedes Sprinter in the county. They're ready to expand the search outward if necessary. We'll find him."

Grissom frowned.

"What?" Brass asked.

"I had a nightmare a few hours ago," he said absently, trying to probe his memory. "There was something, someone …"

"Familiar? Someone you knew?"

"I think so. I don't think I actually saw him in the nightmare. His back was turned to me. But I got the impression I'd run into him somewhere. There was something familiar about him. Maybe about his voice. When did I run into him? Where?" He fell back onto his pillows. "Oh, God, Jim, I need to remember. I have a feeling it's really important."

Grissom inhaled a deep breath and exhaled it as a sigh.

"I can't," he said. "I can't bring it back."

"Relax. It will come to you if you don't try to force it."

Grissom tried to raise a hand to his forehead, and only got about six inches off the bedrail before the restraint stopped him. He jerked at it hard in frustration and only managed to bruise his wrist.

"Let's see what we can do about that," Dr. Richland said as he moved into the room. The man hadn't slept all night, but he was freshly showered and shaved and looked alert.

"How are you feeling this morning, Gil?" he asked, dropping the more formal "Dr. Grissom" he'd used earlier.

"Stressed. Worried sick. Nauseous. Angry. Panicky. Incredibly sad. And terrified. I think that about covers it."

Richland smiled. "Well, at least you're being honest. Let's take a look at the eye."

Very gently, he removed the adhensive patch.

"Okay, look at my right ear," he said. "Just keep looking there. Can you see my right ear?"

"I know roughly where it is," Gissom said.

"Good. Hold steady."

He looked into Grissom's eye from every conceivable angle. Then he leaned back.

"Have any floaters?"

"Grissom concentrated on whether there were any black specks or tiny circles following his gaze when he shifted it.

"One," he said.

"That's good," Richland said. "Pain?"

"Tenderness more than pain."

"That's good, too."

Richland undid both restraints and Grissom didn't hesitate to stretch. It felt so good.

"Okay," Richland said. He got up and closed the curtains and turned off the lights. "Now I want you to cover your right eye with your hand and look up there on the wall."

Grissom could vaguely make out a projected eye chart. He hadn't noticed it before.

"Okay," the surgeon said. "Is there anything you can read?"

"Well, the top thing is an E, but I know that because it's always an E," Grissom said.

"Anything else? How about the next line?"

Grissom blinked once, twice and shook his head.

"It would be pure guesswork," he said.

"Okay," Richland said, turning off the projection. I didn't expect anything more. It's too early. Everything in the eye is still roiled up. It will take a while to start settling out."

"But I'm leaving, right?" Grissom said. There was a hint of a threat in his tone.

"I'd rather you stayed another day, but your heart rate and bp were satisfactory overnight, except during the nightmare episode, but that's understandable. I'm going to prescribe drops, two of them. You use one twice a day and the other four times a day, starting now. I'm going to give you a kit with the drops, a clear plastic eye patch and some medical adhesive. I want you to wear the patch continuously for the next three days. After that, when you're outside, as protection against dust and blowing sand, and any time you sleep, you use the plastic cap. I'm also going to give you some samples of the two bp meds so you don't have to waste time filling a script. I want to see you every day for a week at a time convenient for you. I'll take you in the back way as soon as you get here so we don't hold you up. And I reiterate. You've got to stay with someone or have someone stay with you, and you can't go running around or doing any heavy lifting. I want you as quiet as possible. If you will do all that, I'll spring you." He turned to Brass. "It's on you."

"I understand. He can stay in my spare bedroom, if either of gets out of the lab any time soon," Brass said. "There are plenty of couches at the lab he can use meanwhile to rest."

"Okay, Gil, the nurse will bring your clothes, and I'll get the discharge paperwork started."

Richland started to leave then turned back and extended a hand.

"I really do hope for the best outcome possible, both for you and for Sara," he said.

Grissom took the hand. "Thank you," he said. "For everything."

**50 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Grissom was sitting in the passenger seat of Jim's car, fuming. First of all, his release from the hospital took nearly two hours. Second, filling the bp scripts had taken another 20 minutes. Third, Jim had insisted on driving by Grissom's home and packing a bag for him. He had allowed Grissom to sit on the bed and point out what he needed, and nothing more strenuous.

What he needed was Sara, right here, in this very bed with him. The room smelled of her lavender shampoo and her vanilla hand cream. A forensics journal and two trashy novels sat on the nightstand next to her side of the bed. With the door open to the roomy walkin closet, Grissom had a better view of her clothes and shoes than of his own.

As they had walked from the front porch to the bedroom, everything he noticed reminded him of her. The flowers out front around the shrubbery. The empty juice container on the kitchen counter. The shopping list hanging from a magnet on the refrigerator. Photogaphs.

He was in excruciating pain, as if someone had literally reached into his chest and surrounded his heart in a steel vise.

Memories of the new miniature haunted him.

His inability to remember what had been so familiar about the male figure in his nightmare taunted him.

His ribs hurt fiercely when he moved. His head ached under the butterflied gash on his forehead. His left knee throbbed, and he couldn't figure out why until he remembered colliding with the rear bumper of his car in his mad dash into this very house to find Sara the first time he thought she'd been taken. He looked toward the bathroom and the vision that appeared – of Sara standing at the door, frightened, wrapped in a bath blanket, water dripping from her freshly washed hair – forced a sob from deep within his chest.

"Gil?" Brass said. "You okay?"

"No. I'm not. Are you finished?"

"Yes."

"Then let's go. No more stops."

**48.5 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

"Are you sure, Archie?" Grissom asked for the 30th time.

"Yeah, Gris," the young man said. "Bobby and I checked and rechecked. We're ready to try to track the CCTV signal into the lab. We're ready to record. We've got redundancies and backups of redundancies. Whatever these people broadcast, we'll see."

"You'll get everything?"

"Yeah. We have four recorders set up, actually, all digital. We won't miss a thing."

_Even if we'd rather miss it, Grissom thought._

The waiting was killing all of them. Grissom expected he would own the lion's share of the stress, but all he had to do was look around to see the terror of anticipation in all of them.

Brass, who had always thought of Sara as a daughter, kept wiping a sheen of sweat from his face.

Catherine, who had sometimes regarded Sara as a nemesis, paced the A/V lab, clutching and unclutching her hands.

Greg bit his lower lip until he drew blood and kept running his hands through his hair, making it more unkempt that when he tried for that "look."

Nick sat in a chair with his forearms resting on his thighs, his hands clasped, his head bowed, and bounced his left leg off the ball of his foot.

Sophia stood back, against a wall, her arms crossed, a scowl on her face, her eyes glued to the TV monitor as if daring it to come alive.

Archie and Bobby sat at a control board, occasionally whispering to one another. Wendy, Mandy and Hodges pressed themselves against a wall and tried to stay out of the way.

At 10 minutes before noon, Grissom felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and found Ecklie standing behind him. Ecklie had something to say.

"I wanted you all here for a reason. The more witnesses we have to this event, the more ideas we can generate to locate Sara and pull her out of trouble. Watch for everything, anything. No idea is too foolish, no detail too small. We have much less to go on in this case than we did when Nick was taken. There were no pertinent prints on the letter delivered to Jim at the hospital, no communications of any sort with us. Sara's depending on all of us. Let's not fail her."

"Conrad," Sophia said, "we did check the orderly who delivered the note to Jim, didn't we?"

Brass nodded. Ecklie nodded. "We did. He checked out."

So, with nothing further for any of them to say, they turned back to the blank television monitor and waited.

**x x x x x x x**

The kidnapper was inside the cage again.

"How are you feeling, Sara?" The voice electronically disguised voice asked again.

She stood to face him, an act of defiance, and said nothing. She had been given no food or water since her arrival, and her legs felt weak, but she had to face her tormentor.

"Are you ready for this, Sara?"

Again, she stood mute, her eyes locked on his.

_So familiar._

He stepped close. Without warning, he hit her with a roundhouse right fist that split her cheek and sent her crashing to the floor, dazed. He extracted two sets of shackles, using one on each wrist. Then he pulled her up and attached the restraints to the bars of the cage. Her arms were spread, slightly above head height, and she hung from the shackles limply, struggling to come fully awake again.

Then he withdrew a syringe and plunged it into her left thigh, right through her clothes.

Her captor checked his watch and nodded. He clicked a remote.

"Showtime, girl."


	9. Chapter 9

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 9**

Grissom actually started when the monitor came to life, and he groaned when he saw the image of Sara, hanging by her wrists as blood streamed down her face and neck from a gash on her left cheek. She was groaning, attempting to find purchase on her legs, but they failed her.

Her captor kept his back to the camera, but spoke to his audience.

"I presume you are there, Dr. Grissom, among your friends," he said, his voice oddly disguised. "The plan is very simple. For the next 48 hours, you will have the opportunity to look on, somewhat voyeuristically, perhaps, as Sara Sidle dies. It will not be pleasant for you. But look at it this way: It will be far less pleasant for her."

Grissom couldn't tear his eyes from the monitor, but he spoke to his audio/video expert. "Archie, can you clean that up so we can hear what his voice really sounds like? And trace that signal."

"Already working on it, Griss."

"He must think we'll know his voice if we hear it clearly," Grissom said. "Everyone stay alert."

As Grissom spoke, the captor had stepped out of camera range. He returned carrying an implement right out of the miniature. It was like a giant hammer, with a three-foot handle and a large iron ball at one end. A mace.

Grissom frowned and cringed.

_Please, no._

Sara raised her head, and her eyes went wide when she saw the weapon.

_Don't look, Sara. Don't watch. Oh, God, no._

His prayer died in his mind as the man raised the mace above his head, whirled it three times to pick up momentum and brought it down, crashing into Sara's right calf. Grissom heard bones break and saw Sara's lower leg bend as no leg bends naturally. Sara screamed, and the sound shattered Grissom's heart.

He grabbed for a wastebasket. He had nothing but coffee on his stomach, but it all came back, and he continued with dry heaves for a minute or two longer.

Someone handed him a wet cloth, followed by a clean towel and a bottle of water. He thought he mumbled a thank you.

Suddenly the television picture froze, leaving the lab crew staring at a moment of Sara's agony, frozen in time.

"What happened?" Grissom demanded of Archie.

"It's not a problem at this end, Griss," Archie said. "Whoever is streaming the video put it on pause. Locked the image in. It's not being broadcast any more. No trace possible right now."

"Apparently he wants us to live with that image for a while," Ecklie said. "Jesus."

"And we're supposed to take – Sara's supposed to endure – 48 hours of this shit?" Brass said. The pure hatred in his voice was palpable. "I want answers. _Now!"_

"I'm gonna go check the results on the Mercedes registrations," Nick said. "They should be done in a few minutes." He ducked out of the room.

Grissom's arms were crossed on the table in front of him, and his head dropped to rest on his arms. The nausea was back, and he was heaving again into the towel, bringing up nothing.

Someone was rubbing his back gently, as Sara so often did.

"Gil, try to stay calm. This isn't good for your eye," Catherine said.

_I don't give a shit about my eye._

"Yes, you do," Brass said. Grissom realized he must have given voice to his thought. "And it's time for the drops. Put your head back, and I'll help you."

Grissom didn't want to move. He didn't want to raise his face and let is friends and colleagues see the pain there. They had enough pain of their own.

But he did. Jim gently loosened the patch, applied the drops and pressed the patch back into place.

Grissom sucked in several lungs full of air.

"Archie, tell me what you know about the broadcast?"

"It appears to be wireless," the tech said. "It's bouncing around relays all over the world."

"What?" Ecklie said.

"Yeah, that can actually happen with cell phone calls, too," Archie said. "You might be calling somebody in L.A. and the call is bouncing off a relay in the U.K. This guy might'uv rigged this TV relay to bounce around on purpose. So if he only transmits in short bursts, it's going to play hell with us backtracking the signal. We have to start from square one each time, and the bounce patters probably will vary randomly each time."

Archie and Bobby exchanged a look defining their frustration.

"What about the voice?" Grissom said. "Any luck cleaning it up?"

"We're working on that," Bobby said. "Fast as we can. We captured it. Now we're trying to break it down."

Grissom half turned, looking for Catherine. She jumped up next to him.

"Who'd you have in here earlier to do the hypnosis on the SWAT guy?" he said.

"Dr. Frank Canin. He's a psychiatrist. The best."

"Call him back here. I need him to put me under, try to call out my memories of whoever belongs to that voice." He glanced back at the frozen TV monitor. "There's no way Sara's going to survive this for 48 hours."

He didn't say, but he knew, he wouldn't survive it, either.

**46 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

The same frozen frame remained on the monitor. It had taunted them for two hours.

Sara's leg buckled sideways at the calf.

Sara's face contorted in pain, her mouth open in an involuntary scream.

Those in the lab had stopped looking at it, though Bobby and Archie had promised to shout as soon as the image came back to life.

Meanwhile, the voice project was thwarting them as much as the CCTV signal.

"There doesn't seem to be any background or extraneous noice to cut," Archie told Grissom during one of the supervisor's frequent requests for an update. "There are two main tracks, the kidnapper's voice and Sara's. We can't get rid of the distortion in the kidnapper's voice without eliminating the voice altogether."

"Well, there is one other track, and eliminating it might help us, but it wouldn't help Sara," Bobby said.

"What?" Grissom said, his tone demanding.

Bobby shook his head sadly. "The track carrying the sound of the mace hitting Sara's leg," he said. "Of bones breaking. We could eliminate that track."

Grissom swallowed hard and shook his head.

"If she's going to suffer the act," he said, "the least we can do is share the pain."

Grissom next went to Nick.

"What have you got?"

"I'm a little surprised," Nick said. "There are 276 Mercedes Sprinters in Clark County. Not surprising, all of them belong to commercial fleets that would benefit from having fuel-efficient vehicles to do short hauls in high traffic."

"And you're checking them out how?"

"We've eliminated all of them that aren't white," Nick said. "One entire fleet of 23 is red, so we've set them aside for now. There's a small fleet of six that's dark blue. They're out, too. The remaining 247 are white, and therefore are still in play. I'm calling each fleet manager to ask the usual questions about vans missing, vans in service, vans that have printing or images on them. We can eliminate all of those. I've reached three fleet managers so far, and so far nothing. But we've brought the number down to 187. Tom Kelly was adamant that there was no writing on the van he saw. So that's what we're looking for."

"Fast as you can, Nick," Grissom said.

"You got it."

**45 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

The video came alive again so abruptly, everyone in the A/V lab started.

Then the voice: "I'm sure somebody's been standing by waiting for this moment. Sara and I shall be patient while you all reconvene for Act Two. You have 90 seconds."

Pagers went off.

Cell phones rang.

Team members touched one another on the shoulders and nodded toward the A/V lab.

Footsteps raced to the room.

Grissom, who had just met Dr. Frank Canin, leaped out of Catherine's desk chair to feel Jim's hands on him.

"Careful, no sudden moves," Brass said. "We're only going a few feet. You'll get there."

Grissom turned to Canin. "Could you come with us, Doctor? It will give you an idea what we're up against."

"I'm here for as long as you need me," Canin said. "Conrad Ecklie has, for lack of a better word, retained my services for the duration."

Grissom sighed. That would be a budget-buster. He didn't know Conrad had it in him.

**x x x x x x x**

Grissom felt the bile rise in his throat again when he looked at the monitor.

The kidnapper stood still, with his back to the camera. He seemed to be watching Sara, who appeared only semi-conscious, her face pained, her breathing rapid and shallow. Her groans were audible and heartbreaking. She couldn't put any weight at all on her right leg, so her body was supported by her left leg and her arms, which remained shackled to the bars and wires of her cage.

"Time's up," the voice said. "Be right back."

He dipped off camera again.

"He's giving us some extra time," Archie said to no one in particular. "Trying to iso that signal a little better."

When the kidnapper re-entered camera range, he was carrying a crowbar, and the memories of his nightmare kicked Grissom in the gut. He felt the blood drain from his face.

"What in God's name … ?" Canin's observation faded as he noticed the terror developing on Sara's face.

"I'm gonna swing this pretty hard, Sara," he told his prisoner. "I'm afraid it is going to cripple you."

He used the crowbar the way someone might swing a baseball bat and smashed Sara's right knee, above the already damaged calf.

She screamed in agony and collapsed against her restraints, unconscious.

He pain in Grissom's chest threatened to floor him.

The nausea enveloped him, again.

The image froze, again.

There were low groans from several in the lab.

Grissom heard someone sob softly and looked to see Wendy bury her face in her hands.

He turned to the control board.

"Archie, Bobby, let me know what you find."

Then he turned to Canin and cocked his head in question.

Canin tore his eyes from the monitor.

"I've never seen anything that wantonly brutal in my life," he said.

"You see why time is imperative?" Grissom said.

"You say she's supposed to go through this for 48 hours? My god, that poor woman."

"That's what the kidnapper threatened. He said he kill her over a 48-hour period."

"I don't think she can survive this for two full days," Canin said. "At some point, the pain and stress will trigger a heart attack or a stroke. Or if he hits her like that around the chest and back, she'll bleed to death. A blow like that to the head would kill her instantly."

"I know," Grissom said.

"Let's go," Canin said. "We need to get started."


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N **As some of you know, I don't like posting with author's notes. I learned after writing my first fanfic that foreboding diminishes stories for some people, and to tell you the truth, it does for me, too. A matter of personal preference. But I think, given the reviews I've read in the last 24 hours and some messages offline, that I need to let you know I have no intention of keeping my foot on your throats through the entire story. I intend to keep the tension torqued up full, but not the blood and gore.

As many of you have noticed, the violence has finally escalated to earn the story its M rating, though I hope I'm not going to cause anyone to loose breakfast, except Grissom. Having given you a glimpse into the horror Sara is suffering, it never was my intent to make you live every last detail of 48 hours of torture. That would be overkill, and the shock value would be lost very quickly, taking the tension of the story with it. It simply isn't good storytelling technique. You'll find out what happens to Sara through the eyes of others who witness it, and it won't be easy reading, but you won't have to watch all of it yourselves. Grissom will, and that's enough.

There will be, over the next half dozen chapters or so, two, maybe three more scenes of violence like those you've just witnessed. But they DO NOT all happen in the same chapter. And I will warn you they're coming. I hope you all will stay with me. If some of you find this tough sledding and want to ask questions off line, I'll do what I can to ease the way for you. I don't want to lose a single one of you. Having said that, however, the story is what it is.

And while I have you … if you ever think you know who Sara's captor is, please send me a private message so you don't spoil the mystery for others. Everyone will know in a day or two, anyway.

I'm going to post now – it's 2:30 a.m. where I am. I think I've caught Sara's insomnia.

I shall now crawl back into the writing cave and cease this silly interruption in our regularly scheduled programming. JH

**x x x x x x x**

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 10**

Sara knew when the bright lights went off, the camera was off, as well. And she knew there would be no new pain for a little while, at least. She couldn't make her mind work very well, but at some visceral level, she knew something about this entire experience wasn't right. Something wasn't making sense to her. But so intense was her pain that she couldn't get past the red haze to figure it out.

Truth be told, she didn't care at this point. She wanted the ordeal over – one way or another.

_Stop that! I've never played give-up in my life. This is no time to start. I'm standing on the threshold of a new life with Gil. I need to fight to hold on to that for him. And for me. Damn this man. What is it about him that's so familiar?_

As determined as Sara felt, it was emotionally debilitating to think that Grissom and her friends were watching her captor slowly pound her to death. There would be no consoling Gil over the fact that she was taken while she was with him. He had promised her no one would get through him. She knew immediately it was a promise he couldn't keep. But she kept her doubts to herself. She knew he would die for her. She didn't want to bruise his illusion that he could be invincible for her. Nevertheless, he would be feeling now that he failed her. No one would be able to convince him otherwise. And if she died, he would carry that guilt for the rest of his life.

Another wave of debilitating pain swept over her. There was more to what this man was doing to her than the brutal beating. Life was slipping away from her faster than she imagined it could.

She had to talk to her captor.

"What are you doing to me?" she whispered over parched lips.

"I'm killing you, Sara," he said without joy or sorrow.

"Yes, but why?"

"To finish what Natalie started. I told you that already."

"But why do you have to do that? Natalie put Grissom through hell. She put me through hell. Wasn't that enough?"

"Ernie died. You lived. Grissom's happy. No, it's not enough."

"So you want my life for Ernie's?"

"Natalie did."

"I never did anything to Natalie. Or to Ernie."

"You don't get it, do you? I want – we want – your death for the agony it will cause Grissom. He will blame himself. He will want to be dead, too.. Perhaps, he will even take his own life. _That _will avenge Ernie. It's a beautiful thought, isn't it? The perfect scenario."

Sara's head snapped up. She had heard something. Not in his voice; it remained disguised. But in the cadence. Something.

_Damn it. If only I could remember._

Another shock wave of pain hit her. She felt as if every muscle in her body were on fire and in spasm. She didn't cry, but tears overfilled her eyes and snaked down her face, and when they hit the gash on her left cheek, she flinched.

"Want an aspirin?" her tormentor asked.

She ignored him.

"Can he hear what's going on?" she asked.

"Grissom?"

She nodded.

"Everything, when the system's on."

"And the audio's on when the video's on?"

"Right. Why?"

"I want to talk to him."

"You want to talk to Grissom?"

She nodded. "Just for a minute."

"Why?"

"It's personal."

He laughed. An ironic sound.

"Aw. You want to tell him you love him."

The pain wracked her again. But she nodded. "Among other things."

"You might as well tell me," he said. "Won't be private when you say the words to that room full of people back at the Crime Lab."

"I want to tell him I know this isn't his fault."

She squeezed her eyes closed and moaned.

_Please make the pain stop!_

"Are you sure it isn't his fault?"

"What?"

"If you weren't the one screwing him, it'd be some other woman in here. Or maybe Grissom himself. But you are the one screwing him."

"I'm _married _to him!"

"Whatever. He loves you. Makes you the prime target of opportunity."

"Are you going to let me talk to him?"

He thought about it.

"Yeah, okay. You can have 30 seconds before Round Three."

**43 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Grissom was half sitting, half lying back in a recliner in the lab's audio booth, the only soundproof facility in the building. Jim insisted on administering the eye drops before the hypnosis began, and Grissom agreed on the promise from Jim that he would come and end the session at the first sign that Sara's captor was resuming his broadcast.

"Can it be ended in mid-session without Grissom losing memories or getting hurt?" Brass asked Canin.

"Yes," the doctor said. "If it's done carefully."

Brass put a hand on Grissom's shoulder.

"I'll see that you're there," he said.

**x x x x x x x**

Canin talked Grissom down from his stress and tension into a state of relaxation. Gently and gradually he led him back to his nightmare. It took most of half an hour.

"Where are you right now?" he said.

Grissom described the old house, the sights and sounds and how ridiculous it had seemed to him as he was conjuring up the clichés.

"I can't find any bats," Grissom said.

"Keep going. What are you seeing and hearing?"

He described every detail he could remember.

The bare, gnarled trees.

The cloud scudding over the moon.

The creaking door.

The yellow lace curtains.

The darkness.

The screams.

Always the screams.

The unending stairway.

More screams.

The fall.

The injuries.

And, oh shit! There was Sara. And the man with his back turned. And the crowbar and the fire and the

White-hot.

The horrible burns.

The screams.

The blackness.

Being awakened in the hospital.

"Let's go back to the basement," Dr. Canin said, his voice soft and soothing. "Are you there?"

"Yes."

"What do you hear the man say?"

Grissom frowned a little.

"I just remember one sentence."

"What was it?"

"I'm asking him to take me and let Sara go. He says, _'I don't think so, Mr. Grissom.'"_

"And his voice isn't disguised in any way?"

"No. It doesn't sound disguised. That's why I know it sounds familiar."

Canin shifted in his chair.

"Okay, Gil, I want you to focus on that sentence, on the sound of his voice. Listen to it. Hear it. Think about where you might have heard it before. Do any images come to you, any images you can associate with his voice?"

Grissom closed his eyes and thought about it. He played the sentence, the voice, over and over in his head. His eyes opened.

"A police interrogation room," he said.

"Are you there now?"

"No, but I remember it."

"Can you put yourself there? Can you visit there?"

"I don't know. I'll try."

Canin waited.

"Gil?"

"I'm there now."

"You're in the interrogation room?"

"Yes."

"Are you questioning a suspect?"

"No. Wait. I'm not in the interrogation room. I'm right next to it, in the observation room."

"That's the space separated from the interrogation room by one-way glass?"

"Yes."

"So the people inside can't see you?"

"No."

"Is this man, the man you heard in the basement, being interrogated?"

"Yes."

"By whom?"

Brass opened the door quietly, and Canin's head shot up. A scowl crossed his face. The timing couldn't have been worse.

"It's starting in two minutes," Brass said.

"We're at a totally critical point," Canin whispered.

"I promised," Brass said. "Bring him back."

Brass closed the door softly, but stayed inside the room. He had made a promise.

Canin looked at Brass, then at his patient. Another few seconds wouldn't hurt.

"Doctor," Brass said. "Now. Please."

"We're so close," Canin said.

"No, we're not," Grissom said, straightening up in the chair and running a hand through his hair. "Not any more."

Canin just looked at his patient for a moment.

"How do you feel, Gil?"

Grissom rubbed his forehead. He felt a headache building rapidly. It promised to be a migraine. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed it away. It didn't work. It never worked.

"Gil," Canin repeated, "how do you feel?"

"Tired. Frustrated. Nauseous. Terrified."

"Do you remember anything we just did?"

"Maybe, a little. Like in a fog. A haze."

Brass looked striken.

"I'm sorry," he said to Grissom. To Canin, "Can you take him back to wherever he was? Later?"

"I don't know," the psychiatrist said. "We were there. I don't think we would have needed more than another minute or two."

"Shit," Brass whispered. "Just double fucking shit."


	11. Chapter 11

**42 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Grissom's body felt boneless as Brass helped him back to the A/V lab. The abrupt awakening from the hypnosis hadn't been good. But nothing about any of this was good.

The thing was, Brass understood he'd just made it worse. Gil had been about to remember something that might identify Sara's abductor. Now the progress was gone, perhaps never to be reacquired. If Sara died because they didn't identify her abductor soon enough, he would have trouble living with himself.

**x x x x x x x**

Grissom sat at the table. He directed his gaze to Archie and Bobby.

"Any progress?" he said.

"Not much, Gris," Archie said. "I'm sorry. We might be able to clean up the perp's voice a little, but we can't try right now because he's about to go live again. I'll explain it later. After."

Grissom felt his gut roil and his chest hollow out. It was coming up on 6 p.m. This had been going on for only six hours. There was so much time left in which Sara could be hurt. So much time left for her to suffer. And he was helpless to stop it. They had nothing to go on. Nothing they could use to find her.

The anger that had been building in him since he woke up after surgery surged now, and he grabbed the edge of the table so hard those who saw him thought he might have left finger indentations in the steel top.

He was just gathering the muscle power to uproot the table, which was bolted to the floor, and heave it across the room at Archie and Bobby with the television monitor flipped and took his gut with it.

The sight of her brought him to his emotional knees.

_Oh, God, Sara, what's become of you? How can you take any more?_

A sheen of sweat coated her face. Her beautiful dark brown hair was black with perspiration and matted to her head. One strand hung over her face, over her left eye, and another along her cheek in front of her left ear. Both strands lay entombed in the drying blood that streamed from the cut along her cheekbone.

She seemed to hang from the irons that shackled her wrists, and even her uninjured left leg had buckled with exhaustion.

Her head lolled chin to chest. She kept raising it, only to have it fall back.

Her eyes, her deep brown eyes had gone dull, her face slack.

_And it's only been six hours!_

He couldn't bear to see her hit again.

"Dr. Grissom, I hope you're there," the man said. "Ms. Sidle – or is it Sidle-Grissom now? – has something she wants to say. Sara, you have the stage. Be brief."

Grissom grabbed the edge of the able again.

His knuckles went white again.

The muscles in his arms strained at his skin.

Uncontrollable trembling started at his hands and traveled up his arms to his shoulders and chest.

He knew he was about to lose the last of his emotional grounding, the last of his sense of self. His penchant for restraint died when he saw the agony in Sara's eyes as she tried to speak.

_Don't, Sara, please. I know what you want to tell me. You don't have to say it out loud. Don't do this to yourself. Don't do this to us. We both have to stay tough, Honey. Please, don't let him win. I will get there. I will get to you. I promise._

"Gil."

The sound of her voice choked him. She sounded so terribly hurt.

"I'm sorry I'm putting you and the team through this. I know some of you, especially you, Gil, are blaming yourselves. Don't. Please. There is nothing anyone could have done. It's nobody's fault except the man standing here in front of me."

She cried out in pain, though as nearly as Grissom could tell, she hadn't been touched.

Not again.

Not yet.

"Some of you think I've had a difficult life, and there certainly have been tough passages. But the years here in Las Vegas, with all of you, with Warrick, have been so deeply precious to me. You showed me how to live again. And, Gil, you showed me how to love. And how to trust. You have been my support, my friends, my family, my life. I don't know if I'm destined to die here, to die today, or tomorrow. I hope I don't. But there is always that possibility. And I don't want these things left unsaid if the worst happens."

Sara's voice lowered, as if meaning the next message for only one set of ears.

"Gil, I love you. I've told you this before. I've always loved you. If I'm to die here, I'll die loving you. Hold onto this. It's a beautiful thought."

Her words shocked Grissom's system, whipping his mind back to the aborted hypnosis session, triggered something.

But what?

Behind him, Sophia Curtis's eyes narrowed. Alarms were going off in her head.

But she didn't understand why.

Her eyes were drawn back to the TV monitor, and what greeted her was a scene that made her flinch first, and then crouch down on the floor and let tremors wrack her body. Her mind was in total turmoil.

What had she just heard?

**x x x x x x x**

Catherine ran out of the A/V lab with a hand clasped over her mouth. She hit the bathroom hard and tried to keep from strangling herself as she sobbed and puked at the same time, straining over a toilet. The bastard had come back with the mace again and used it on Sara's left shoulder. The sound was horrific. Sara's scream had frozen her blood.

She only caught a quick look at Grissom, but she resolved as soon as she got out of the head, she was going to have to have paramedics in the lab on standby. He looked as if he might have a heart attack where he sat.

Sophia came in then.

"Can I help?" she asked.

Catherine spit water into the sink time and again until she felt halfway clean. She had a toothbrush in her locker. She'd use it when she had time.

"Thanks," she said. "I'm going to hold up. I have to. How're you?"

"It's devastating," Sophia said. "And the thing is, I heard something I think should mean something to me, but I can't get a handle on it."

"Maybe we should use the hypnotist on you," Catherine said. "It seems to be a trend."

"I don't need a shrink, at least I don't think so. It was something Sara said. It was like somebody touched a live electric wire to my spine."

"Go work with Archie," Catherine said. "Listen to the segment again. Try to figure out what caused that response."

**x x x x x x x**

When Catherine left the bathroom, she went looking for Nick. The results from the fleet check of the white Mercedes vans had to be complete.

"All the fleet vans have have writing and images on them," Nick told her. "Lettering, graphics, whatever. There isn't a single plain white Mercedes Sprinter in the county. So I'm expanding the search outside Clark County."

"Well, get Greg to help. We have to move this along Sara's running out of time. She can't last through 48 hours of this." Her eyes darted around the lab. "Where is Greg? I haven't seen him in hours."

Nick shuffled his feet and shrugged.

"What?" Catherine demanded. "We need everybody on the job here. Where is he, Nicky?"

"He was here. He saw Sara get hit the first time. It blew him up. You know how he feels about her. He jokes about it, how he's in love with a married woman. Well, he had something stuck in his craw. A hunch. An idea. He told me he was going to check it out and would be on his cell if needed. I haven't heard from him since."

"You think he was just fabricating a reason to get out of the lab, away from the video feeds?"

Oh, God, no," Nick said. "He didn't want to see Sara hurt. Hell, none of us wants that. But he really did have an idea. I just don't know what it was."

"Well get on the phone, find his ass and get it back here now with a damned good explanation for where he's been or a promise of a suspension without pay," Catherine said. "Now, Nick, or you'll have time off with him."

**x x x x x x x**

Back in the A/V Lab, Grissom had dropped his head onto his arms, which now lay crossed in front of him.

The migraine had torqued up to full agony, enveloping his head and spreading down his neck to his shoulders and back.

The picture of Sara, now static on a television monitor no one could bear to look at, had burned itself into his brain.

He couldn't live with the image.

He willed the migraine to kill him.


	12. Chapter 12

**DYING**

**By ProWriter 11**

**Chapter 12**

**40 HOURS EARLIER . . . **

Greg skated into the break room. Nick was at the table, forcing himself to eat a sandwich as he skimmed down the list of Mercedes Sprinter vehicles registerd in Nye and Lincoln Counties, adjacent to Clark County to the north and west. Greg saw what he was doing.

"Forget that," the young man said. "Where is everybody? I need everybody now."

"What?"

"Hurry. Help me round 'em up. Here. Five minutes."

Greg hurried off toward the A/V Lab. Nick turned toward the Trace and DNA labs.

Grissom was talking to Catherine.

"Break room. Now," Greg yelled at them.

"Where have you been?" Catherine demanded.

Greg jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

"Break room," he said. "I'm going to tell you."

The two senior CSIs frowned at one another, shrugged, and got up to follow.

"A junior Ecklie in the making," Catherine muttered.

"Do you need me?" Frank Canin asked.

"I don't know," Grissom said to the shrink. "You never know. You'd better come."

Greg had whirled to look for Brass when he smacked into Sophia.

"Break room," he repeated. "Got to find Brass."

"Nick's got him," Sophia said. "What's up?"

"Just hurry."

Greg's body was exuding so much electricity, Grissom wasn't sure the kid would be able to remain in his skin much longer. Greg started to speak even as people were still pulling extra chairs around the conference table.

"When Nick IDed the Mercedes van, and the SWAT guy said the one he'd seen was white and plain, something clicked for me," he said. "I remembered seeing a white Mercedes Sprinter around my apartment. They were doing some cable TV upgrades for the management company. It fits, right? So I went to the management office and got the name of the contractor. It's called Video Solutions. They're out on East Craig Road, near Nellis. Anyhow, I called Nick, and he wasn't any closer to identifying the van we were looking for, so I went out to this place."

Catherine interrupted. "You should have cleared it first with me," she said.

The Greg juggernaut rolled right over her.

"I remembered this company because the technicians at my complex were cursing out the signs on the side of their truck. They were those magnetic things that you stick on and peel off."

He paused for effect. He spun a finger in the air.

"You get where I'm going with this, right? These guys said they had just gotten a bunch of new signs, and some of them weren't holding well. They were struggling to get one of theirs back on the side of the van."

"You think whoever took Sara was driving a van where the signs had fallen off?" Grissom said. "_Both_ signs? From _both_ sides? What are the odds?"

"Fallen off or been peeled off," Greg said. "It would be easy. Peel 'em off. Grab Sara and stash her, then put the signs on again and return the truck."

Brass started to stand. "I need to get some people …"

"Been there, done that," Greg said. "I had some photos I screen capped after the guy hit Sara the first time. I took them out to Video Solutions, identified myself, showed the photos to the owner to convince him how serious the situation was and asked to see his employee list. He was horrified enough, but wouldn't turn over the list without a warrant. I didn't have enough to support a request for a warrant, so I took pictures of every license plate on every vehicle in the employee lot."

"Greg, that's trespassing," Brass said.

"Not if I was standing on public property," the young CSI said. "And I was. I was on the sidewalk or in the street for each photo. It got a little acrobatic, but I did it. Then I went to the Cop Shop and ran every plate. Guess who came up as an employee of Video Solutions?"

No one in the room had a clue.

"Mitch Douglas," Greg said, the smug look on his face saying it all.

Grissom's eyes flew open and his mouth dropped. Sophia looked stunned.

"Lionel Dell," Grissom said. Then he shouted. "Sonofabitch."

Sophia looked at him with tears in her eyes.

"'It's a beautiful thought.' Lionel Dell used those words when Sara and I were interrogating him," she said. "He's good with his hands, makes little things. We thought he was the Miniature Killer and Ernie Dell killed himself to take the fall for his only natural son. When we told him our theory, Lionel was actually moved by the idea."

"I remember," Grissom said. "He said something like, 'Ernie didn't take a bullet for me. But it's a beautiful thought.' I was standing in the observation room."

Brass stood so fast he knocked over his chair and didn't stop to right it.

"I am so all over this," he said. "Keep me updated. I'll return the favor."

And he was gone.

Greg chased after him.

"Wait," he called. "Here's his home address and his work address. You'll need them for the search warrants."

Grissom turned to Dr. Canin.

"This is where I was going with you," he said. "The man in my nightmare. The voice belonged to Lionel Dell."

"How can that be?" Catherine asked. "Why would your mind flash on Lionel Dell in a nightmare? You hadn't seen or heard of him in over a year."

"But I had," Grissom said. "When Sara and I were sitting in my car, waiting for SWAT to show up that night, I saw some movement and a shadow outside the car. I started to draw my gun and turned to see what it was." Grissom's voice dropped to little more than a whisper. His eyes went far away. "He wasn't wearing a mask then. Probably figured he didn't have to. But I saw him for just an instant. And he saw me recognize him. Then the flashbang went off, and the memory of what I'd seen got pushed back somewhere in my subconscious, I guess. It resurfaced, almost like a clue, in the nightmare. My mind was trying to tell me who was responsible."

"Okay," Nick said. "So you think it's gonna be as easy as searching his home and workplace and finding Sara in a basement?"

"No," Grissom said, shaking his head sadly. "I think Lionel Dell is a lot smarter than that."

**37 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Cathering and Nick had gone back to the A/V Lab to work with Archie and Bobby on the CCTV trace that wasn't going anywhere.

When Greg had finished passing information to Brass, he had returned to the break room to find Grissom slumped in the same chair he had occupied for hours.

Brass had charged Greg with looking after Grissom, making sure he got the drops in, and getting him back to the hospital for his appoint with Dr. Richland.

"Out of the lab while Sara's still not safe?" Greg had said incredulously. "You're kidding me, right? Maybe you'd like me to change the earth's rotation, or teleport you to Mars, or part the Pacific Ocean for you while I have nothing better to do. Grissom's not going anywhere unless it's out in the streets with a shovel to start digging up the city to find his wife."

"If he won't go," Brass said, handing Greg a business card, "this is the doctor's contact information. Call him and tell him the problem. Maybe he can work out something."

Brass left, and Greg went back inside.

He sat down opposite Grissom and studied the man who had been his inspiration, his mentor – well, along with Sara – and his supervisor. A couple of days ago, Grissom had looked fit and happy. Now the man appeared to have aged 10 years. New lines etched a face with gray skin. His natural color was gone. Even remnants of his perpetual tan had disappeared.

His shoulders slumped. His head was bowed. That patch over his eye made him look physically like the cripple he had become emotionally.

Greg's heart broke for him.

He pushed a white paper bag across the table.

"Here," he said. "A pastrami-on-rye from Wolfies. Deli mustard. Extra pickles. Slaw. You've got to eat something. Brass said you haven't eaten in 36 hours."

"Thanks, Greg," Grissom said. But he made no effort to reach for the bag.

"Come on, Griss. Just nibble at it, will ya? We have to leave for the hospital in 40 minutes."

Grissom didn't raise his head.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"You've got an appointment with your surgeon to look at the eye."

Now Grissom glanced up.

"When did that happen?"

"Brass made the appointment. You're supposed to see the doc every day for a week. We got a time when they can take you right in. We should be over and back here in a flash. We'll take one of the Denalis and use the lights and siren."

Grissom looked down again, at his hands in his lap.

Greg noticed they were trembling.

"You gonna eat?"

Grissom shook his head.

"Not hungry."

"Well, then, maybe I should put that in the fridge for later, and we can go to the hospital now."

"Not leaving," Grissom said.

"You have to see the doctor."

"Tell him to figure it out."

**x x x x x x x **

Richland said he would come to the lab. Greg returned to sit with Grissom.

"He's coming here," Greg said.

"Huh?"

"Your eye surgeon. He's coming here."

Grissom said nothing.

Greg's heart was killing him.

"Griss, what can I do to help you? To help Sara?"

"You're doing it, Greg. You identified the kidnapper."

"So what? What does that get us? So we know it's Lionel Dell. But if he's not on his apartment property, if he's not on his work property, what does that get us? I haven't helped at all."

The shake of Grissom's head was almost imperceptible.

"It gets us nowhere, you're right," he said. "We can't break through his closed-circuit setup, we don't know where he has Sara. We can't find her."

Greg heard his voice break.

"No, we will find her."

"I don't think so," Grissom said. He drew in a deep, labored breath. "This isn't like me. I want to fight for her. I want do die for her if I have to. But I don't know how to do any of that. How do I tell Dell he can have me if he will let Sara find medical help? He's given us no way to contact her. Or him."

"Don't give up, Griss. That's not you. Don't give up for Sara. She wouldn't, if your situations were reversed."

"She's stronger than I am, Greg."

"No. She's strong. But you are, too. Come on, Griss. Put your mind in gear. We can't do this without you. She can't survive without you. Think about that."

**x x x x x x x**

Ninety minutes later, Dr. Richland appeared in the break room with a nurse.

"You know, we don't much make house calls any more," he said to Grissom.

Grissom looked up at him and away. Richland looked shocked at his patient's appearance. This was an emotionally beaten man.

He motioned Greg to leave the break room with him.

"Is it that bad?" Richland asked.

"Worse," Greg said. "We know who's got Sara, but not where she's being held. He's got her shackled in a steel cage. He's using a mace and a crowbar on her. And he's broadcasting it back here over closed-circuit television. Grissom's had to watch every moment of it."

"Oh, Jesus," Richland said. "What's the guy done to her?"

"He used the mace on her right calf and her left shoulder and the crowbar on her right knee. So far. Our coroner, Al Robbins, says Sara's probably crippled permanently already, and if the guy starts hitting her in the body or the head, it's pretty much all over."

"I would think so."

"It's agony," Greg said. "He'll hit her and then freeze the picture for hours on her suffering. You can't walk into our A/V Lab and not see this incredibly damaged Sara on every monitor in the place. He not only wants Sara dead, he wants Grissom destroyed."

Richland looked back toward the break room.

"Looks like he's got a pretty good start on both counts."

When they returned to the break room, Richland checked Grissom's eye. While there was no way to test the vision, he did examine the wounds and said everything seemed to look as good as possible. The retina reattachment was holding and there seemed to be no undue inflammation of the cornea. The lens was shot and would have to be replaced, the least of their worries.

"I'll come back over here tomorrow, Gil," Richland said. "I can understand your not wanting to leave the lab. Just keep on with the drops and stay as quiet as you can. And don't forget to eat and drink liquids. Your body can't heal if you don't feed and water it."

He didn't mention that there was nothing food and water could do for the spirit.

As Richland walked out of the building, he realized Grissom hadn't said a single word to him.


	13. Chapter 13

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 13**

**Alert: Very brief torture **

**31 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Brass and Nick returned to the lab together. Nick split to take evidence to Trace, though he had little hope Hodges could find anything useful in it.

Brass saw Greg in the break room and pealed off to talk to him.

"Where's Grissom?" the cop said.

"The A/V Lab." Deep lines of fatigue and worry had worked horizontally across the young CSI's forehead and vertically between his eyebrows. "He's been in there for more than five hours, bugging Archie and Catherine, pacing and more and more withdrawing into himself. Not at all like he was when Natalie took Sara. He was a perpetual-motion machine then, all over the place, doing everything, processing evidence …"

"You're forgetting, Greg, we have no evidence this time," Brass said. "We found no sign of Sara at Dell's apartment, anywhere on the Video Solutions property, even at Ernie Dell's old home. We scoured those places. Grissom is like an empty stomach. When it has no nourishment to process, the bile can build up and eat right through it."

"Nice analogy," Greg said.

"Speaking of empty stomachs, did you get him to eat anything?"

"After the eye surgeon left – he said everything still looks okay, by the way – I got Grissom to eat half a pastrami sandwich I got for him at Wolfie's. But he couldn't keep it down."

"Probably too rich and spicy for him right now. He hadn't had anything to eat in so long it was if he'd been fasting. You have to break a fast gently."

"That's what I thought. And Sophia. She went back and got him some chicken soup. He won't even taste it."

"I'll go talk to him," Brass said.

"I've never seen anybody like this before," Greg said. "The despair is coming off him in waves. I think it's worse because the tension's so bad. It's been like nine hours since Lionel and Sara last went live. She could be dead already for all we know. It's really getting to him. It's getting to all of us, but understandably, it's worse for him. He just feels so, so helpless."

"Yeah. I'm sure. Helpless is the worst feeling in the world. If you have something you can do and fail, at least you know you tried. Grissom has nothing even to try."

"Is there two-way sound on that CCTV thing?" Greg said.

"I don't know. Why?"

"I was just wondering if you were gonna tell the kidnapper we know who he is."

"Somehow, Greg, I don't think that's a very good idea. It might unbalance him more."

Brass walked for the door before turning back.

"When does he get his next drops?"

Greg looked at his watch.

"Any time now."

**x x x x x x x**

Brass walked up behind Grissom and put a hand on his shoulder.

Grissom didn't start.

Didn't flinch.

Didn't turn.

Didn't move at all.

"Hey, buddy, how're you holding up?"

No response.

Grissom was sitting on a stool at a high work bench, slumped and still. Jim swiveled him around until they were face-to-face. Grissom slowly raised his eyes. The sadness and loss Brass saw there made him flinch.

"Where were you just then?" Brass asked.

Grissom's eyelids drooped. He looked terminally exhausted.

"With Sara," he said, so softly Brass had to strain to hear.

"Oh?"

"So many years. So many chances. So many mistakes. So much to make up for."

"You'll have a chance."

"We were doing pretty well, making up for lost time. Lost opportunity. We thought we'd have years. We barely …" Grissom squeezed his eyes shut and his chin hit his chest.

"Gil, you can't lose faith. If you can't do it for you, do it for Sara. She needs your positive energy. She can't survive this alone."

Grissom shook his head very slowly. Once.

He glanced at his watch.

"It's been more than nine hours."

He glanced at a TV monitor.

"Nothing's changed." He swallowed hard. "All that pain. The shock. I think must be over already."

"Dell said 48 hours."

"Dell's not a doctor. Frank Canin said she couldn't last two days."

Brass had nothing he could say to that except, "It's time for your drops."

"Fuck the drops. I don't care."

"I'll be right back."

It took Brass longer to return that it should have to fetch two small bottles from an office refrigerator. When he stopped in front of Grissom again, he was carrying the meds and a 12-ounce cup with 10 ounces of chicken soup in it. Mostly broth.

He put the soup on the table and led Grissom to a lower chair, where he could stand over him to administer the medicine. Then he delivered the soup.

"No," Grissom said.

"You have to eat something. As much as you can, okay? Please."

Grissom accepted the soup but just held it for several minutes. Brass didn't press, but he watched. Grissom's eyes were all over the lab. Except on the monitors. When he looked around and his field of view was about to slide over a monitor, his eyes detoured around it.

Brass glanced at one and understood. The picture of Sara was ghastly.

She was half-standing on her left leg.

She was hanging by her right arm.

Her right calf and knee were broken and maimed.

Her left shoulder twisted at angles human bones and muscle don't assume naturally.

Sara's mouth was distorted in a scream, her eyes shut tight, her hair sweat-soaked and disheveled. Her clothes bloodied by the gash over her cheek.

Brass looked away.

Now he felt sick.

Grissom sipped at the soup.

Brass left him to his regrets.

**x x x x x x x**

Brass went to Archie.

"Do we know if there is two-way audio?" Brass asked.

"If so, he hasn't used it yet," Archie said, studying the output of a graphic equalizer in front of him. "Why?"

"Cath," Brass said, "if we find out there is two-way voice capability, how do you think this guy'd react to knowing we know who he is? Greg suggested we think about it."

"I wouldn't risk it," she said. "He's not exactly stable."

"I agree with Catherine on that," Ecklie said as he entered the room. He glanced at the TV monitor and away just as quickly.

"Where do we go from here, Jim?" he said.

A small voice came from the other side of the room.

"Storage lockers," Grissom said.

"What?" Brass said. He'd hardly been able to hear.

"Storage lockers," Grissom repeated. He pushed himself out of the chair, tired beyond enduring, and half stumbled to a laptop station nearby. He rubbed his good eye as he waited for the machine to boot up. Meanwhile, Nick and Greg joined them.

Greg noticed the empty soup cup and glanced at Brass. The cop nodded. Greg smiled.

Grissom typed in some search parameters, and four dozen red dots came up on the computer screen, overlaying a street map of the city.

"Storage locker facilities," he repeated again. "The room where the cage is has no windows we can see. It's not large. When the camera pans out, you can see the corners of the back wall. It's not big enough to be warehouse space. It's about the size of your average storage locker. Dell could have closed himself up in there and built the cage without anyone being the wiser. Stocked it the same way. Brought Sara in …" His voice faltered, and he stopped.

Grissom turned to Nick and Greg.

"Either of you know what Dell uses as a private vehicle?" he asked.

"Yeah," Greg said. "I checked on it when I was running the DMV database."

He flipped through his notes.

"Here it is. Oh, yeah. Color me jealous. It's a 2003 Harley Davidson VRSCA V-Rod, 100th anniversary model. Blue and white over gold. Hard to miss. Registered to a Mitch Douglas. He doesn't own a car. If he was taking that bike in and out of a storage facility, somebody'd notice."

Catherine turned to Grissom, happy to find a way to engage him.

"Gil, can you expand that search to cover all of Clark County, and maybe Bullhead City, Arizona, too?"

He turned to the task immediately.

"That's maybe a dozen more cities," Brass said.

"And a few dozen more storage facilities," Grissom said.

Catherine nodded and turned to Ecklie.

"Conrad, we're going to need a lot more help," she said. "We've got to get to every single facility on that map, and we've got barely more than a day to do it."

"You'll have it," Ecklie said and strode out of the room.

**28 HOURS EARLIER . . . **

Grissom moaned when the monitors came to life again. He didn't have to see Sara struck to get sick to his stomach now. Like Pavlov's dogs, he was conditioned. One look at Sara's agony and whatever resided in his stomach relocated to the wastebasket.

He glanced to be sure the wastebasket was in its proper place.

It was.

Empty and clean.

Waiting.

The electronic voice crackled to life, its tinny quality irritating Grissom even more now that he knew who lived under the mask.

_Take it off and at least face us like a man, you gutless bastard._

Grissom's couldn't force his gaze from Sara. His best friend. His lover. His wife.

The choking sob that bubbled from his chest was up and out too quickly, surprising him. He had no time to swallow it back.

Catherine looked over to him, and tears welled in her eyes.

A muscle jumped along Archie's right jaw.

Bobby rubbed his eyes; the tips of his fingers came away wet.

All of them were grief-stricken, terrified and exhausted.

Catherine flipped open her cell phone and punched Brass's number on speed dial.

"It started again," she said when he answered.

"He hasn't done anything yet. He's talking."

She glanced over at Grissom.

"Right now, he looks like he wants to ram through the monitor, grab Douglas and rip his heart out with his bare hands. Thirty seconds ago, he was nearly crying."

She looked back at the screen.

"I can't tell if anything's changed. She looks pretty much the way she did the last time. She's alive. You can see her breathing, and she moves a little every once in a while. But it's not good."

"Okay," Dell/Douglas said. "I think you've had enough time to assemble everyone in the viewing audience. I just wanted to point out that we're winding down Day One, and Sara is still alive. She's been very still for a long time. I think she might have gone into shock.

"I just came on so you could see her. I'm not going to injure her further today." He paused. "Oh, the hell I'm not."

He whirled and smashed the crowbar into Sara's left knee. He had been holding it low, out of camera range, and the swiftness of the attack caught everyone by surprise. The crunch of shattering bone and cartilage was unmistakable, sickening. And Sara screamed again, as what had been her good leg collapsed under her, leaving her hanging by one good arm. Now she wasn't moving at all.

"That's it for the extremities," Dell said. "Some time after noon, we will begin on her torso and head. After that, death will be inevitable."

He paused and looked directly into the camera, fearless now for some reason about showing his masked face. The confidence of success, Grissom guessed.

"And how are you faring, Dr. Grissom?" he asked. "If you hadn't killed Ernie, this wouldn't be happening. It's all on you … Gil. Look at your wife. Even if you found her in the next 30 seconds, she probably would die of shock. If she lived, she would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She would develop excruciating arthritis, a life in constant agony. Would you want to see her that way? Could you even think of loving her that way?

"You see, I know all the ways Natalie is flawed, and yet I love her anyway, because I've never known her when she wasn't flawed. I accept her for the way she came to me.

"But your Sara came to you whole, and healthy. Two things she will never be again. It will be better for her when she dies, Dr. Grissom. It will never be better for you. You will have to remember her like this and as she becomes over the next day. You will carry these images for the rest of your life. And you will know it was because of you. You did this to her. You killed Ernie, and now I'm killing Sara, and that is killing you.

"Life comes full circle.

"We'll see you in a few hours."

The picture returned to Sara and froze.

Catherine whirled to look at Grissom. Her eyes found him as his face crumpled. His head dropped onto his hands, and his entire body trembled.

And that's when he developed super-human strength. He lifted his head and placed his hands along the edges of the table. He stood then, and with an animalistic roar, he ripped the table's bolts right out of the concrete floor, picked up the table and hurled it through the lab's window/wall of glass.

He stood there for a time, looking at what he'd done, his chest heaving. It was Catherine who noticed the blood splattering the floor beside Grissom's shoes. She looked for the source and found he had sliced both palms diagonally from the base of his thumbs to the base of his little fingers.

He was losing a lot of blood.

He had to be in some serious pain.

He wasn't even aware of it.


	14. Chapter 14

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 14**

**23 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Gil continued to stare at the damage he'd done – or through it. Catherine couldn't be sure which.

She rushed to him and tried to guide him to a chair while ordering Archie to call the paramedics and Bobby to find some clean white towels.

Gil made it two steps to the chair and collapsed.

Catherine tried to catch him, but she was at an awkward angle and couldn't support him. Archie and Bobby where at her side immediately, easing Grissom to the floor, taking care to protect his injured eye.

His face had gone parchment white. His eyes closed slowly and his body went slack. A sheen of sweat covered his face, and Catherine entertained a fleeting fear that he'd suffered a heart attack. She rolled him gently onto his back and put a chair cushion under his head. His breathing was erratic and shallow.

Blood rapidly pooled on the floor beneath his right hand. His left hand lay across his abdomen, where his shirt soaked up much of the blood as it leaked out of him. But it was running faster than the cloth could absorb it, and a second pool began to develop under his left ribs.

The paramedics were on the way. Bobby brought towels and ripped them into strips. Catherine took Grissom's right hand and tightly bound the wound in the strips of terry cloth. Archie attended to his left hand. By the time the medics appeared, blood had soaked through the layers of toweling.

Ecklie rushed in and crouched beside Catherine, eyeing the smashed lab and the unconscious man who did the smashing.

The medics removed the towels to examine the wounds and recovered them with pressure bandages. They started an IV and brought a gurney for him.

"No," Catherine said. "He's got to stay here."

"He's going to need transfusions," the head medic said, "and I suspect he's facing major orthopedic surgery on both hands."

"You can put him on the sofa in my office," Catherine said. "He can be transfused here. He couldn't be operated on until he's stable, so stabilize him here. Then we'll figure out something."

"Those pressure bandages won't do the trick," the medic said. "He needs serious stitching."

"So stitch him," she said.

Ecklie intervened.

"Catherine, he's better off at the hospital."

"Is he?" she said, a direct challenge. "What do you think he's going to be like when he wakes up in the hospital again? He nearly went berserk after the eye surgery. And now, at this stage, to take him away again? He'll go mad. He's already on the edge of a total breakdown. He's likely to dismantle something."

"Looks like he already did," Ecklie said nodding at the damage.

Catherine exhaled in frustration. "Don't worry about your precious lab, Conrad. I'm sure Gil will pay for the damage, and if he can't we'll all chip in."

"The county will pay, Catherine. That's not the point. He could lose the use of his hands. He already stands to lose an eye."

She could see the truth in Ecklie's words.

"Oh, shit, okay," she said. She turned back to the paramedics. "But tell the doctors not to admit him without direct authorization from me."

Ecklie stayed put for a moment, watching Grissom. He shook his head.

"You know, Catherine," he said, "I hope someday I find somebody to love me as much as he loves her."

**x x x x x x x**

When Brass got to the emergency entrance to Desert Palm Hopital, Owen Richland, Grissom's eye surgeon, was there to meet him. Brass had called ahead to alert him Grissom was on his way in. Again.

They didn't shake hands. Surgeons seldom do. It's a self-protection thing.

"Rough week," Richland said.

Brass didn't have to put his questions to words.

"First off, there's no indication he had a heart attack or a stroke," Richland said. "For the moment, we're attributing his collapse to stress, exhaustion, a lack of nourishment and a precipitous bp drop due to blood loss. Maybe a panic attack."

Brass nodded. "That sounds bad enough, but at least it can all be reversed."

"I checked the eye, and it's none the worse for all this," Richland continued. "There's a orthopedic hand specialist with him now in the OR. Miraculously, the damage is largely superficial. There are fairly deep wounds to the adductor, abductor and flexor muscles in the balls of both palms." Richland indicated the bulge at the base of his thumb. "There was some additional damage to the abductor and flexor muscles along the heels of both hands. There's some blood vessel damage, too, which is obvious given the copious bleeding. That's reparable. Fortunately, there was no tendon involvement. Dr. Mingus is surgically repairing the injuries right now. Then we'll stitch him up, put soft casts on both hands and return him to you."

"What about the blood loss?" Brass asked.

"We gave him a couple more units. We also didn't know when he had his last one, so we gave him a tetanus shot, as well. And we gave him a feeding tube so he'll be getting a some nourishment for as long as we have him. When was the last time he ate anything?"

"Other than some chicken broth, he hasn't been able to keep anything down, and truth is, he pretty much stopped trying."

"Stubborn bastard, isn't he?"

"You might say. So you don't have to admit him?"

"We should, yes. But we don't have funds available to rebuild the hospital after he takes it apart in his urgency to get back to his wife. I understand he's already made his demolition skills known in one of your labs, which is what brought him back to us. What happened, if I may ask?"

Brass blew out a deep breath of fatigue.

"From what I understand, when he saw Sara hurt again, he actually tore a work station from its bolts in a concrete floor and threw it through a glass wall," Brass said.

"Well, that's good for his blood pressure. We'll be sure to keep a check on it," Richland said. "So he thinks he was born on Krypton?"

"I think he knows he was born in California, but right now he's pretty sure he's living in hell."

**x x x x x x x**

After looking in on the drama in the A/V Lab, Nick, Greg and Sophia returned their focus to the task of checking out storage facilities. The list in Clark County plus Bullhead City, just over the Arizona border, totaled 84. They split up the list and began calling. They asked if any units were registered to a Lionel Dell, Natalie Dell, Ernie Dell or Mitch Douglas. When they got a hit, as they did once on Mitch Douglas, police were dispatched immediately.

Wrong Mitch Douglas.

Somehow, Brass had managed to get a blanket warrant to search every storage facility in the county and to see the full rosters of renters at each. Armed with official copies of the warrant, deputies under Brass's command began a methodical on-site check of facilities, taking along photos of Mitch Douglas and his special Harley hog.

The story became monotony. No one recognized the photo of Dell. No one remembered the bike. Nothing showed up on the tenant lists.

They were nowhere. And running out of time.

**x x x x x x x**

As the anesthetic began to wear off, Grissom opened his eyes.

His first sight was Jim Brass leaning against the far wall. Grissom knew it was a hospital room. He'd had lots of experience making the connection among white walls, IV drips and beeping machinery.

He wondered what had happened to him. Wondered where Sara was.

Then it all came thundering back.

Rolled his head on the pillow and moaned.

He raised his hands and considered how they now resembled oven mitts.

"What's happening?" he asked Brass.

"I'm standing here hoping you don't rise up out of the bed to smite me," he said.

"I don't seem to be in any condition to do any smiting. What's new at the lab?"

"You haven't missed anything," Brass said, "except for this very distraught, exhausted, despondent madman who tore the A/V Lab apart, quite literally."

"I seem to remember," he said. "There hasn't been anything more from Dell?"

"No. And we haven't had any success yet in checking storage facilities. But we're pushing hard."

"Jim, you know I can't stay here, right?"

"You don't have to. As soon as Dr. Richland can get back here, you can leave."

Grissom looked at his hands, again.

"How bad?"

"Surprisingly, nothing that won't heal."

Grissom felt relief. Then he felt apprehensive.

Jim apparently read his mind.

"You're wondering how you're going to do certain hygiene chores, right?"

"Yeah, actually, and I will not have you …"

"No!" Brass said. "Absolutely not. I'm not volunteering. Dr. Richland said he would give you some tips on how to do … stuff before you leave."

Brass thought – he hoped – Grissom might laugh a little. He got exactly the opposite reaction.

Grissom turned his face to the wall.

"This is all my fault," he said softly. "Oh, God, Sara. I'm so sorry."

**17 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

It was a little before 7 p.m. when Grissom finally got back to the lab, flanked by Brass, who kept a hand on his arm as they made their way slowly to the A/V Lab. Grissom was weak, and Brass had no intention of letting his crash to the floor if he fainted.

Grissom wore a resolute face, the picture of a man who had no intention of bending to the whim of a madman. It was a façade, and Brass knew it. But it was fine. If it gave the team some encouragement, it was worth trying. Brass just didn't know how long Grissom could maintain the appearance since his own reserves had been milked dry, his optimism destroyed almost 36 hours before.

Nick squinted when he saw Grissom's encased hands.

"Hey, Boss, I'll give you a hand with those eye drops when you're due."

Grissom nodded his thanks.

He stopped and watched workers who were replacing the glass wall he had shattered.

"I'm pretty sure Ecklie's pissed," he said.

"Actually," Catherine told him as she got close and put a kiss on his cheek, "you'd be amazed at his reaction. Anticipating his anger, I told him I was sure you'd pay for the damage and, lacking that, we'd all chip in. He brushed it off and said the lab would pay. And then he crouched down beside you and said, 'I hope someday I find someone to love me as much as he loves her.'"

Brass's eyes went wide and Grissom's mouth dropped.

"Ecklie said that?" Brass asked. "Our Ecklie?"

Catherine smiled. She reached out and ran her hand lovingly down Grissom's cheek. Then she turned and went back to work.


	15. Chapter 15

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 15**

**14 HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Because it was Las Vegas, and so many things are open all night, the team separated out the 24-hour storage facilities from those with daytime hours only. Just before 10 p.m., they began tackling the all-night places, as did the cops on the ground. The rest would wait for morning.

The prayer to which no one gave voice was to have the matter resolved before sunup.

Grissom joined in the phone call effort, using the tips of fingers protruding from the casts to punch in numbers and gingerly holding the receiver to his ear with an open palm. He couldn't curl his left hand enough to hold the receiver to hang up between calls, so he simply jabbed at the switch hook in the cradle.

Each time he touched something, it sent bolts of pain through his hands and up his arms.

In typical stoic Grissom style, he refused to wince or complain, and he refused to take his pain-killers, afraid they would knock him out.

There was an aura of final desperation about the people at the telephone bank.

The desperation grew as the hours crept away.

Coffee and caffeine-laced soft drinks disappeared from the break room, the supply exhausted. Miraculously, a large cooler filled with cola and root beer arrived, and someone was making sure rented commercial dispensers of top-quality coffee stayed full and fresh.

Trays of sandwiches, fruit, cheese and cookies appeared. They were barely touched.

Just after midnight, Archie appeared at the door.

"They're back," he said softly.

**1O HOURS EARLIER . . . (Violence warning)**

His stomach churned when Grissom stepped back into the A/V Lab.

When he saw the image on the monitor, he gasped. The emotional reserves he'd tapped to maintain himself through the past few hours simply evaporated.

Catherine was at his side in a cocaine heartbeat. But Grissom stabilized himself and evaluated the image. It had changed.

Sara had been released from the shackles. She half-sat, half-lay on the floor of the cell. She appeared to be unconscious. When he looked closely, he could see her breathing, but her breaths were shallow and infrequent.

He couldn't help himself.

He walked to the monitor screen and touched her face with a trembling hand. He wasn't trying to melodramatic; indeed, he was unaware of anyone or anything in the room with him.

He wanted to feel her skin, her warmth.

All he got through his wounded fingers was the feel of cold glass.

Sara was partially bent over to her left, and Grissom saw that her right humerus, the upper arm bone, had been crushed.

When had that happened?

_Oh, Jesus. Can any of this ever be put right? I have to find her. Sara, forgive me._

Dell's masked face appeared and blocked the view of Sara.

"It's almost over, Dr. Grissom," he said. "By my reckoning, your Sara has 10 hours left. It's time to begin the countdown to the finale."

He turned and brought the crowbar down on Sara's exposed back, right over her right kidney.

She groaned and then went silent.

Dell turned back to the camera.

"She is now bleeding internally, Gil. She has 10 hours to live."

The screen went still again.

**x x x x x x x**

The thought kept going through Grissom's mind.

_How does he know?_

_How does he know she has exactly 10 hours left?_

_You can't predict how long it will take someone to bleed to death._

_Can you?_

He turned to Catherine.

"Where's Al Robbins?"

**x x x x x x x**

Too weary to describe, Grissom gingerly pushed through the morgue door and looked around for the coroner. He found Robbins at a computer, catching up on paperwork.

A second monitor sat slightly behind the one at which he labored. He was a feed from the A/V Lab.

Grissom glanced at it and raised an eyebrow in question.

"I came up, but I felt like a fifth wheel," Robbins said. "And I had responsibilities here. But I had to know what was going on. So I asked Archie to rig a feed in here." He looked at his friend with rheumy eyes. "Gil, I'm so sorry."

Grissom sat on a low stool.

Put his elbows on his knees.

Focused his eyes on the floor between his feet.

Took a deep breath.

"Can she survive this?"

He couldn't look at his friend as Al thought about an answer.

"Theoretically, if you reached her right now, yes. She might have to spend years in hospitals and in therapy. But she could live. If there are more body blows coming, or if this really goes another 10 hours, probably not."

Grissom scrubbed his hands over his face.

"Well, let me ask you this. How can he predict she'll live exactly 10 more hours?"

"He can't."

"But he is."

"He's guessing."

"I don't think he leaves anything to chance."

Robbins shook his head.

"I just don't know, Gil. How are you doing?"

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not."

Grissom stood painfully and left the lab.

"Thanks," he said over his shoulder as he pushed through the door.

**x x x x x x x**

Grissom discussed his question with Archie.

"You think maybe he's manipulating the broadcasts to fit his timeline?" Archie said.

"Could he?"

"Sure."

"Could you tell?"

Archie shook his head.

"Not really. The video isn't time-stamped. I kind of wondered why it wasn't. That would explain it. He disabled or never set the time and date functions on the camera."

"So Sara could be dead already."

Grissom felt Archie's eyes bore him.

"Yeah," the younger man said. "She could have been dead yesterday, before the broadcasts even started. Oh, God."

Grissom saw the tears start to streak the lab tech's face. He put a hand on his shoulder.

"Archie, you did all you could. Sara and I both thank you."

**EIGHT HOURS EARLIER . . .**

Brass rushed into the lab at 4:11 a.m.

"U-Stor in Pahrump. Get this. They rented a unit two weeks ago to a Sara Sidle. I am presuming here it isn't Sara's."

Grissom struggled to his feet shaking his head. "No. Let's go."

"Not you," Brass said.

"The hell not me," he replied and was out the door.

**x x x x x x x**

The doors to the facility space were open and the area under police guard when Brass and Grissom rolled up.

Grissom was out of the car before it came to a full stop. He swept under the crime scene tape and trained his flashlight on the interior.

The cage!

It was there.

And empty.

_Empty!_

He prowled the perimeter, careful to avoid stepping on anything that might be evidence. Catherine and Nick came in close behind him with their crime-scene kits.

"So where is she?" Catherine said sadly. It was a rhetorical question.

"I've got something," Grissom said. "The shackles are still here. Looks like blood and tissue on them."

He flashed his light along the walls.

"There are no cameras here," he said.

He was full into investigative mode. Unemotional on the outside.

Inside, he felt sick.

Nick pointed his flash at the floor of the cage.

"Looks like blood," he said.

"You see a way in there, Nicky?" Catherine said. She turned to Grissom. "Gil, I'm sorry. You need to step out."

A nice way of saying he didn't work there any more.

Grissom nodded and moved to stand with Brass. They just looked at each other.

"Gil, I know what you're thinking. Don't let yourself go there," Brass said.

The shrug Gil returned was one of total resignation.

"What else can I think?" Grissom said. "She's already dead, and he's taken her body some…"

He had to break it off.

"Yes, that's one possibility," Brass conceded. "But you said it yourself. There are no cameras here. So it's also possible this is a decoy, and he has a second place just like it where he's holding Sara."

"That's a bit Machiavellian, even for you," Grissom said.


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: **I had promised some of you a bonus chapter last weekend and didn't get to it, so this is makeup because I owe you.

The song lyrics are from "Mad World" by Gary Jules with Michael Andrews. J

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 16**

**FIVE HOURS EARLIER . . .**

The sun was well up when Grissom and Brass returned to the lab. Grissom thought he had never been so sorry to see a new day.

He went through the door and stopped.

He leaned against a wall.

He had absolutely nothing left.

He'd put it all out for the mad-dash trip to Pahrump. Now his eye hurt. His hands felt as if he had grabbed hot irons and his head pounded. He didn't know if he could find enough strength in his legs to make it back to the A/V Lab.

Brass took his arm.

"Come on, Buddy. Time for drops."

While they walked, Brass told Grissom the search of storage facilities was continuing in the hope of finding another leased by Dell, in which they also would find Sara in time to save her.

"You were right about a storage facility once. We might yet pull this one out," he said.

Grissom didn't respond. He had nothing to add. He bowed his head and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He found it immeasurably difficult. He didn't sit in a chair in the A/V Lab so much as he collapsed into it. Obediently, when Brass indicated he should tilt his head back, he did. And he left it tilted back when Brass was finished, resting on the back of the chair with his eyes closed.

He had noticed the picture on the TV monitor still was frozen on Sara on the floor of the cage. He knew he would have to endure watching at least one more assault on his wife, and he was certain it would break him. He had convinced himself the final beating had been administered already; it simply hadn't been broadcast yet.

_If it isn't over for me, perhaps it's over for Sara. At least her agony is ended._

He found damned little comfort in that possibility.

He had an almost overwhelming urge start crying and to continue crying until his tears washed the pain away. But he couldn't cry for an eternity, and that's how long he would grieve for Sara.

He tried to imagine where her body might be, what Dell might have done with it.

And he waited.

**2.5 HOURS EARLIER . . . (Final violence warning)**

The masked face was back. The eyes were black with hatred. Grissom thought he could almost see the sneer on the lips half-hidden under the knitted material.

"You knew this was coming, Gil. I don't imagine that knowledge helped you prepare to watch your wife die. We know how that feels. We weren't prepared to watch Ernie die. But parts of that video appeared on the Internet. I figured you leaked it to torment us, and it did. People kept sending the links to me. Natalie wanted to see it, so I showed it to her. It changed everything.

"This is what's going to happen now, Gil. Sara's awake. I don't know if she can speak to you, but I will give her the opportunity. After that, it will be time for my final action against her. And then later, you'll have the opportunity to be with her – electronically – as she dies.

"Shall we begin?"

The camera pulled back. It was the same cell. In the same storage facility space. And Sara. In the same cage. Exactly as they'd found it. Only when they found it, she wasn't there.

_She's already dead._

On the screen, it appeared he had moved Sara, or somehow she had moved herself. She was sitting now, propped against the side of the cage. She raised her head a little and looked at the camera. Her eyes were glazed, filled with pain. She mouthed the words, "I love you." She had no strength for more.

He felt as if someone had punched through his chest wall and wrapped piano wire around his heart. He tasted copper in his mouth and realized he'd bitten down on his lip hard enough to draw blood.

When Dell hefted the mace, Grissom's mind willed him not to hit her again.

_No, don't. DON'T!_

But he did. Of course he did.

Again three revolutions over his head and then down into Sara's abdomen.

Ribs shattered.

Liver and spleen crushed.

Massive internal bleeding.

Dell again.

"We'll get back to you soon."

**30 MINUTES EARLIER . . .**

Grissom didn't have the strength to pace.

His nerves were too shot to sit still.

He leaned against a wall.

Then he turned to face the wall.

He grabbed a towel and dealt with the dry heaves again.

He felt every synapse in his brain sending messages of pain.

He felt heart-numbing anguish and refused to give into it for he knew Sara was feeling – had felt – so much worse.

He felt loneliness. Staggering loneliness.

He walked past a table and saw a sheaf of papers on it, stapled in the upper left corner. The tenant list from the storage facility in Pahrump. Idly, he picked it up and started leafing through it. He ran down the names. Page after page. He flipped a page over and the television flipped on. He tossed the papers on the table, still open to the next page he would have scanned.

She was conscious.

She was looking at the camera.

Looking for him.

**NOW, AGAIN**

Sara's eyes held Grissom spellbound as the camera moved in on her face. Those eyes had showed him so much love. They were windows to her soul. All he had to do was immerse himself in their warmth to become one with her…

She had been stoic for so long. So Sara-tough. So defiant.

But now her will broke. Her eyes filled with tears. Her chin dropped to her chest, and Grissom saw the tears fall away from her face. Not a lot of them. Just enough to convey her surrender to the inevitable.

When she looked up again, her eyes still showed pain and fear, now joined by something new.

Infinite sadness…

Using her last reserves of strength, she spoke to him.

"Don't be sad, Gil. This isn't your fault. I cherish the time we had together. I …" She began coughing, and the blood hemorrhaging from her lungs as a deep pink froth escaped her lips and cascaded in a sickening stream down her chin and neck to her shirt. She gasped, trying to gain breath, and she failed. Her body convulsed in pain, and when she was able to look into the camera again, her fear had escalated to terror…

All he wanted now was to hold her in his arms, to tell her how much he loved her, to assure her she wasn't alone, to feel, to absorb, the last warmth of her body…

Grissom passed a hand over his eyes. He looked back in time to see the slackness take over her face. To hear the last ragged exhalation of breath. And to watch in abject horror as the life he lived for left her eyes. The sparkle, the warmth, the love, now gone.

And then the screen went black.

Grissom's body slid down the face of the cabinet until he was sitting on the floor of the A/V Lab, his legs in front of him, bent sharply upward at the knees, his arms crossed over his chest, as if he were trying to hold himself together, quite literally. His face became mural of pain and consummate loss. Catherine was there. Brass was there. Ecklie and Nick were there. And, of course, Archie. No one spoke to him. No one put a hand on his shoulder or tried to comfort him.

He would not have heard their words. He had retreated so far into himself he could have been termed catatonic.

He would not have felt their touch. He willed himself to feel nothing. He would be just fine sitting on the cold, hard floor for as long as he lived.

As for comfort, there wasn't any. There can be no comfort without hope that the world will get better, easier. Grissom was beyond the ability to be comforted, beyond the fantasy of hope.

The Grissom they knew was gone.

Only his shell remained.

_The refrain kept circulating in his head._

_Disjointed._

_Distant._

_Familiar._

_Haunting__**.**_

_**And I find it kind of funny**_

_**I find it kind of sad.**_

_**The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had…**_


	17. Chapter 17

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 17**

**30 MINUTES LATER . . .**

No one had been able to coax Grissom off the floor.

No one had been able to get through to him.

Brass swiped at his tears and cringed when he remembered how Natalie had acted in custody.

This was so similar.

She and Lionel had killed Sara.

They had destroyed Grissom.

Collateral damage.

Natalie had won.

**x x x x x x x**

Nick walked past. His eyes glistened. It felt as though his world had been knocked off its axis never to be righted.

He saw Greg come to stand by the door. He knew Greg had not been able to bring himself to watch the final chapter of the saga that cost Sara her life. Greg glanced at Nick. Nick shook his head. Greg glanced at Grissom, then turned and ran for the men's room.

Somehow, Nick knew, what was left of the team had to pull itself together and finish this case, find a resolution.

Find Sara.

A funeral might give Grissom some closure.

He shook his head again.

It hadn't helped all that much that they had Warrick's body to bury.

Funerals were overrated.

He picked up the list of U-Stor tenants he'd left on the work table and noticed that someone had left the list open to the fourth page. For no special reason, his eyes scanned the page and went wide. He looked around for Catherine and found her crouched next to Grissom, trying to get him to talk to her.

He crouched next to her.

"Cath," he said softly. "I've got something you should see."

Catherine touched Grissom's shoulder and let her hand trail down his arm.

"I'll be right back," she told him and then joined Nick a few feet away.

Nick handed her the list.

"Eighteenth name down," Nick said.

Catherine frowned at the paper.

"My God," she said. "What are the odds? Let's find Jim and see if the warrant covers this."

The eighteenth name on the fourth page was Penny Garden.

One of the original Miniature Killer's victims.

**x x x x x x x**

The sand-colored Tahoe chewed up the miles of Route 160 between Las Vegas and Pahrump. Catherine drove. Nick sat beside her. Brass was with Grissom in the back seat.

Brass had guessed correctly that the discovery of Penny Garden's name might bring Grissom back, at least part way.

He had crouched down next to Grissom on the lab floor and put a hand on his friend's shoulder, to get his attention.

"Gil, we found another storage unit with a renter's name you'll recognize," he said. "It's listed to Penny Garden, Natalie's second victim."

Grissom's brows knit. His eyes refocused. He turned his head to look at Brass.

"Third," he said.

"What?"

"Penny Garden was the third victim."

Brass started counting on his fingers.

"Izzy Delancy, Penny Garden …"

"Chloe was first," Grissom said. "The younger sister."

Catherine smiled. "He's right."

"We're headed back to Pahrump, to open Penny's unit," Brass said. "Want to come?"

Grissom dropped his head into his bandaged hands and scrubbed them through his hair. He shook his head as if to clear cobwebs, then went still again.

"Gil, you with us?" Catherine asked.

He nodded, just a little, and they helped him to his feet.

Once underway, Nick pulled the rental list from his pocket.

"Wonder who else is on here," he said. "Who left the list open to page four anyway?"

"I did," Grissom said.

Nick turned in his seat. "You saw Penny's name?"

Grissom shook his head.

"Coincidence," he said. "I wasn't even looking at the names. Just flipping pages. Passing time. When the monitor came to life, I tossed the papers back on the desk as they were."

"Lucky you did. Let's see if there are others," Nick said.

It took less than a minute.

"Raymundo Suarez. He's here, too."

Nick finished the list.

"The only ones that aren't here are Izzy and Barbara Tallman."

"Izzy was probably too well-known," Brass said. "Dell might have worried the name would be recognized."

"And Natalie didn't kill Barbara Tallman," Catherine added. "Barbara's brother did."

"It's an homage," Grissom said. "Lionel Dell was creating an homage to Natalie."

When they pulled up in front of the storage unit, two patrol cars were there already. Brass handed another copy of the warrant to the facility manager, and he unlocked the doors. A blast of cool air hit them from within.

"Holy crap," Brass said.

The unit, somewhat smaller than the one with the cage, was filled with computer and electronic equipment.

"I guess we know now where he broadcast from," Catherine said.

Brass turned to her.

"I'm going to take two of these officers and go look at the Suarez unit," he said.

"Fine," Catherine said. "You think you could arrange a chopper to bring Archie out here quick? We'll never sort through this without him."

**THREE HOURS LATER . . .**

"This is gonna take some time," Archie said. "I'm not sure what all this is."

He had spent 40 minutes working with the equipment, looking for anything that might give them a clue as to the location of Sara's body. He found nothing helpful. Now he went back to try to figure out what the equipment was set up to do.

The Suarez unit was empty, though there were signs of some recent activity there. Bits of sawdust on the floor. They sent a sample back with the helicopter pilot. Greg would meet the chopper when it landed and take the evidence back to the lab for analysis.

Grissom had spent most of his time sitting on the rear bumper of the Tahoe staring off into the distance. Brass couldn't be sure if he was thinking or folding in on himself again. Then suddenly he got his answer.

Grissom pushed himself to his feet gingerly and looked around, his eyes frantic. When they landed on Brass, Grissom began walking toward him, faltering as he moved.

Brass rushed up to meet him. "What?"

"I know where Sara is."

"_What?"_

"If I'm right, and this is an homage to Natalie, where else would he have left Sara? Red Rocks Canyon."

Brass looked stricken.

"Oh, dear God," he whispered, then put a hand on Grissom's arm. "Wait here."

He quickly filled in Nick and Catherine, who insisted on coming along. Brass recruited one of the two squad cars, as well, and the two cops assigned to it. He left the other two with Archie, and they set off.

**x x x x x x x**

Now Grissom sat up front, his face a mask of anticipation and apprehension.

His left leg danced off the ball of his foot.

His eyes constantly scanned the horizon.

Catherine kept glancing at him, grateful he wasn't acting catatonic any longer. She wasn't sure what would happen if they found Sara's body in the same place Natalie had left her to die under an overturned red Mustang.

"We're about a mile out, according to the GPS," she told her passengers.

As they approached the rock formations so horrifyingly familiar to them all, Grissom undid his seatbelt and laid a hand on the door handle, ready to leap out. Catherine stopped on a rise above the canyon floor. She saw Grissom reach the rim of the hill and freeze.

She and Brass were beside him seconds later. The three of them confronted a sight they hoped never to see.

Sara's body lay crumpled in the rocks and sand 20 feet below. Marks on the hillside indicated she had been dumped over the edge and tumbled to the bottom.

As hard as they willed it otherwise, none of them saw any sign of life.

The sob they heard from Grissom was heartbreaking.


	18. Chapter 18

**A/N: **You have all been most patient (and pained) by developments. So I'm giving you one additional very short chapter today. This chapter deserves its own space, undiluted by what comes after. There's still a way to go, but this is the beginning of the end, or, at least, the end of the beginning. J

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 18**

**FIVE HOURS LATER . . .**

Grissom jumped over the lip of the small hill and began sliding and stumbling toward Sara, totally unmindful of his eye or his hands or the pain or the medical restrictions on his activities.

When he reached her side, he dropped to his knees. Her face was a death mask, pasty and slack.

"Oh, God, no. Sara." He choked on the words.

He held his hands out, hovering inches above her body, as though his proximity could radiate life force back into her.

She looked so broken.

Her limbs twisted.

Her head at an angle that suggested a broken neck.

Blood on her face.

He reached out for her face.

"Gil, _No_!" Catherine screamed. "Don't touch her. She's evidence."

_Oh, Christ. She's Sara. I have to hold her._

To hell with the evidence.

He touched her hair. It was warm, almost hot to his fingertips under the desert sun.

He wanted to reach under her, lift her and hold her body to his chest, to feel her face on his neck one more time.

For once in his life he wanted to let go, to let his emotions rule for a while. To scream at the top of his lungs. To cry to the point of dehydration.

He wanted to touch the cut on her cheek. To kiss it and make it stop hurting.

It had to hurt. The cut was deep. It had happened many hours earlier, and yet the blood still oozed from the wound.

_What?_

The dead don't bleed.

The dead have no heart action to pump blood.

Then he noticed there was no blood on the right side of her face, where she had been coughing it up as she died. None on her neck, or her shirt.

He quickly bent over her and put his ear to her mouth. He thought he might have felt a small, warm exhalation.

_I'm hallucinating. Feeling what I want to feel. Not reality._

He glanced down. He couldn't deny seeing the slow, shallow rise and fall of her chest.

He turned back to Brass and Catherine, who were making their way to join him.

"She's alive! Call for help."

They came to a skidding stop and glanced at one another.

"Wishful thinking?" Catherine asked.

"God, I hope not," Brass replied. He put out an immediate call for a medivac chopper.

When they reached Grissom, he was examining Sara's body.

Her legs, arms, shoulders and neck were badly bruised, but there seemed to be no broken or crushed bones.

He raised her shirt. Her ribs, too were horribly bruised. But feeling them gently with his fingertips, he could find nothing obviously broken.

He bent deeply over her and slid his hand casts under her head, cradling her.

"Sara, can you hear me?" he said softly.

Nothing.

"Sara, it's Gil. Come on, Sweetheart. Open your eyes."

Neither Brass nor Catherine had absorbed the reality Grissom had seen. When he got no response from Sara, they assumed his belief in her life had been an optimistic mistake.

Then she groaned softly, a sound in which they all rejoiced.

Now all three were on their knees, stroking Sara's hair, urging her to be strong. And they kept talking and urging until the slapping of helicopter rotor blades drowned out their voices.


	19. Chapter 19

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 19**

**SEVEN HOURS LATER . . .**

Brass forced Grissom to eat two granola bars from a vending machine near the ER waiting room at Desert Palm Hospital, hovered over him like a goddamned mosquito, refusing to let him move until he swallowed the last cardboard-dry morsel and chased it with a 20-ounce bottle of water.

"Satisfied?" Grissom said. "Now get out of my face."

Grissom's natural instinct was to get up and pace. But his body wouldn't move. He didn't even have adrenaline left to run on.

Nothing made sense to him.

He had seen Sara's body destroyed.

He had watched her die.

He had _seen her stop breathing._

Then and now didn't compute.

He knew is brain had turned to clay, but he should have been able to come up with some sort of explanation. He couldn't. Absolutely nothing would explain this.

Someone stopped in front of him. Grissom looked up into the face of Owen Richland, his eye surgeon. The man did not look pleased.

"Would you follow me, please, Gil?" he said.

"No," Grissom said. "I'm not leaving this room."

Richland glanced to Brass.

"He can't help you," Grissom said. "I'm staying here."

"Gil, they're taking you to one of the examining rooms just behind the door. Near where Sara is," Brass said. "Dr. Richland wants to check your eye, and Dr. Mingus wants to check your hands. That's all. If there's anything to report on Sara, I'll find you."

Grissom let himself be led, let himself be helped up on the gurney he couldn't mount because of his battered hands.

Richland took the patch off Grissom's eye and examined it. He asked Grissom to look at an eye chart on the wall. He asked Grissom what he could read. Surprising to Grissom, he got through the third line, still lousy vision, but improvement.

"Despite your best efforts to blind yourself permanently, it appears you're getting better," Richland said. "The retina is holding. The cornea is healing. The lens is still trashed. We can fix that. In the near term, your sight might continue to improve, but it won't be normal until we can give you an implant. What can you see?"

"Light. Dark. Shape. Movement. Color. No detail."

"Okay. You plan on doing any more body surfing in the desert?"

"Not immediately."

"Then it's your choice. You want the patch on or off?"

"Off."

Richland handed Grissom an inexpensive plastic zippered pouch.

"In there you have some more drops. A clear plastic eye cover I want you to wear when you sleep, so you don't inadvertently scratch the eye. Tape for the patch. Instructions for everything. Follow them. Call me if you need me. Stay out of the desert. I want to see you in a week."

He turned on his heel then turned back.

"I'm glad Sara got out alive. But you need to take care of yourself."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not. Get some counseling. Nobody goes through what you've been through and comes out unscathed on the other side. You nearly had a meltdown in the lab. That was after you took a turn as a one-man demolition derby and nearly amputated your own hands. You may well be more damaged than Sara. You need someone to talk to. Your cockroaches won't be much help."

Grissom nodded, then his head snapped up. "How did you know about …?"

"I have sources in the cockroach community."

Mingus was next in. He took the casts off Grissom's hands, unwrapped the bandages and checked the wounds. Then he checked the circulation.

"No infection. Everything looks okay, nice and pink, which means blood is going everywhere it's supposed to," he said. "We'll rebandage, but I think you don't need the casts any more. I want you to change the bandages every day. After you take the old ones off, wash your hands gently with an antibacterial soap and then put an antiseptic ointment on the wounds. Come back in a week, and we'll take the stitches out."

Grissom held his hands up.

"How am I supposed to change the bandages?" he asked.

"I'll be doing that for you," Brass said.

Mingus nodded and left.

Brass moved to the gurney.

"I just came to tell you they're taking Sara up for an MRI or a CT scan, one of those things," he said. "It will tell us more about what's going on inside."

"They're worried?"

"Concerned," Brass said. "As you've been pointing out, then and now completely contradict. Everybody's looking for answers."

"I'm just looking for Sara," Grissom said. "I want my wife back, well and whole."

"I know. I want her back, too."

A nurse came and rebandaged Grissom's hands. She left, and he sat there, unsure where to go, whether to leave. Brass cocked his head toward the waiting room. Grissom jumped down from the gurney and followed Brass outside. His eyes didn't work together. He found it disconcerting.

They sat and waited. And waited.

Grissom was startled by the appearance of a familiar face. He stood.

"I'm Richard Jennings, Dr. Grissom," the face said. "Do you remember me?"

"Of course," Grissom replied. "You treated Sara and me after a madman named McCaskey did his best to kill us. You won."

"Actually, you and Sara won. The bond between the two of you is like nothing I've ever seen before. Or since. Which is what brings me here."

"You're treating her?" Grissom said.

Jennings nodded. "I took the liberty before I spoke with you of asking your lab to send over some clips from the video feeds. Very painful to watch. I have to tell you, if he had done to her what it appeared he did to her, she would have died fairly quickly. Just the shock alone …"

"So what can you tell me about her real condition?"

"Somewhat, well, complicated."

"Can we try the bottom line first?"

Grissom cringed as he prepared to hear what damage his wife suffered and what trauma she would face as she fought to get back to some semblance of life.

"We can. Sara's going to be fine."

Grissom stared at Jennings as he might stare at the sudden appearance of a unicorn, joy and skepticism mixed together.

"That's it?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"Could you elaborate?"

Jennings smiled. "I don't know what he was hitting her with, but it wasn't cast iron. She has a lot of bruises, and they're painful, particularly to her right shoulder, left leg and her ribs. Blood clots are a concern, but we're watching her closely. There are no broken bones, no internal injuries, no head injuries. She could have been hurt worse tripping off her front porch."

"I don't understand," Grissom said.

"Watching the video, I don't fully understand, either," Jennings said. "She did look to have traumatic injuries. She doesn't. She did appear to be suffering intolerable pain, and that I'm sorry to say was an accurate portrayal. We think we know why. It is the one point of concern."

Grissom waited.

"Are you familiar with potassium chloride?"

"A salt substitute in small doses. Lethal in large doses," Grissom said.

"Right. It's generally the third and last step in execution by lethal injection. The condemned is given sodium thiopental, an anesthetic, then a paralyzing agent, usually pancuronium bromide or succynlcholine. They paralyze the diaphragm and the lungs. Then the toxic agent, potassium chloride, interrupts the electrical signals that allow the heart to function, causing cardiac arrest."

"And this affects Sara how?" Grissom said.

She had a number of injection marks on her thighs and significant levels of potassium chloride in her system. We found traces of potassium chlorine around the injection sites."

Grissom froze.

"Obviously, she didn't get lethal doses," Jennings said. "But they were high non-lethal doses, amounts sufficient to cause intense abdominal and chest pain. We think that's how the assailant created the severe pain you saw Sara exhibit in the videos. It was very real."

"Are there dangers to her now?" Grissom said. He felt his chest tighten again.

"Overdose can cause heart and nervous-system problems," Jennings said. "I think the odds are in Sara's favor, but it's something we'll watch long-term. By the way, she also suffered from dehydration and exposure, but neither was critical. We've rehydrated her." He put a hand on Grissom's upper arm. "For now, relax."

"Thank you, Doctor," Grissom said.

But as he turned away, he knew he couldn't relax.

Somewhere out there, beyond the hospital walls, Lionel Dell still ran free.


	20. Chapter 20

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 20**

**EIGHT HOURS LATER . . .**

The two calls came one on top of the other. Greg first.

"The sawdust and chips are balsa wood," he told Catherine.

"Balsa wood?" she said. "That's what the cage in the miniature was made of."

"Right," Greg said. "And Hodges says the material in the cage and the sample from the U-Stor facility came from the same source."

"What's the significance?"

"Well, balsa wood is very, very light. And it's very, very strong. You make model airplanes out of it. At least I used to, when I was a kid."

"You have a theory, Greg?"

"That the weapons we saw on the video were made from balsa and painted to look like iron. They would have left bruises, swung hard enough, but they couldn't break bones."

"But we saw the bones broken."

"Yeah. We sure _thought_ we did."

The second call came from Archie.

"You are so not going to believe this," he told Catherine. "The videos were part real, part faked."

"How?" Catherine said.

"Think 'Star Wars,'" he said.

**x x x x x x x**

Grissom refused to leave the hospital until Sara regained consciousness, so Dr. Jennings arranged for a conference room where the team could meet. It was 14 steps from Sara's room. Grissom said it was 10 steps too far.

The room was small, converted from a double room for patients. With Grissom, Brass, Ecklie, Catherine, Nick, Greg, Hodges and Archie all inside, there was a serious strain on the oxygen supply and the A/C.

Grissom filled them in on Sara's condition and the report he'd gotten from Richard Jennings. The potassium chloride revelation made everyone cringe.

"Okay, let's get through this," Ecklie said. "Jim, what's the news on Dell?"

"In the wind," Brass said. "We have his apartment, his workplace, Ernie Dell's house and Natalie's apartment building staked out 24/7. Presumably, he's smart enough not to go back to any of them. His picture is with TSA at McCarran, at the bus terminal, the train station, with state and local police. He'll turn up eventually, or a solid lead will. There's an APB out on his Harley. It should be easy to spot."

Grissom cleared his throat. "What about Sara? As long as he's out there, she's not safe."

"Nor are you," Ecklie said. "We've got undercover installed here at the hospital, and we'd like you to remain here until Sara is well enough to leave. We'll bring you clothes and toiletries from your house. Then we're putting you both in a safe house until Dell is captured."

"I don't want to be out of the investigation," Grissom said.

"I know it hasn't been obvious the last few days, Gil, but you don't work in the department any more," Ecklie said. "We can call you in as needed as a consultant. We don't need you on this. We need you safe."

"We'll talk about it later," Grissom said. "I want to hear what Hodges and Archie have."

Ecklie nodded. "Hodges?"

"I basically have what I told Catherine. The sawdust and small wood chips in the storage room and the wood in the miniature are both balsa. The balsa is a fast-growing tree that can get to 100 feet tall, actually, and is only found in Central and South America. The closest stands to the United States are in southern Mexico, and that is where our samples came from. Both are Mexican balsa. Low-density, high-strength.

"Did you know Thor Heyerdahl used balsa in his raft, the Kon-Tiki?"

"Hodges," Grissom interrupted, "get on with it."

"That's about it. It's widely used in model aircraft, wind turbines, surfboards, boats." He opened a plastic grocery bag and put the contents, a 4x4-inch board, on the table. "That's balsa, painted iron gray. It could pass for metal on a video."

"Or if you're half out of your mind with pain from potassium chloride injections," Nick said.

Grissom had to agree.

"Archie?" Ecklie said.

"Well, this was a learning experience for me," the A/V tech said. "I began to suspect what I was dealing with when I found Lightwave 3D loaded onto two Octacore Mac Pro computers with eight-core processing."

"English," Ecklie said.

"Un, sorry. Lightwave 3D is a super high-end computer graphics program," Archie said. "The Octacore Mac Pros are extremely powerful, high-end Macintosh computers. They also had Adobe After Effects, a motion graphics design and visual-effects software.

He looked around the room and saw the puzzled faces.

"You know, what they are isn't as important as what they do," he said. "As you suspected, Grissom, the videos were made in advance of their broadcast. By how much, we don't know. But Dell needed some lead time. He videoed Sara – him talking to her, her talking to you, him using those balsa weapons on her. It couldn't have been hard to get the responses he needed. I mean, you see something that looks like a crowbar or a mace coming at you, you're going to flinch hard, which is exactly what Sara did. It gave Dell exactly the effect he was going for."

Grissom nodded. "And she was already in excruciating pain," he said. "So add natural expectations …"

"And you get a video close to what we saw, even before the sound and pictures are tweaked," Archie finished.

"And the injuries?" Ecklie asked. "We heard bones breaking."

"All very believable special effects. Some very basic expressions of CGI."

The puzzled faces returned.

"CGI," he said. "Computer-generated imagery. Oh, come on. _Star Wars? Terminator? Indiana Jones? Judgment Day? Jurassic Park? Forrest Gump?"_

"_Forrest Gump?" _Grissom said.

"Yeah. You don't think they really cut off Gary Sinise's legs, do you?"

Grissom raised an eyebrow. He began to understand.

"Wait a minute," Catherine said. "Dell isn't that smart. He couldn't have done this alone."

They all looked back to Archie.

"Sure he could," the tech said. "Native intelligence has nothing to do with it, really. Maybe he can't appreciate Shakespeare or explain quantum mechanics, but the basics of these computer programs are reasonably easy to grasp given some time to practice. He's in the video business to start with. So he knows stuff already."

"So," Greg said, "Dell shoots Sara with the potassium chloride to put her in pain and probably cause some shock and disorientation. Then he drags this weapon into the cell. Sara sees it and thinks it's a crowbar, but it's really balsa wood painted dark gray. He swings, makes contact, she expects excruciating pain, so she believes she feels it because she's already in pain. Is that it?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Archie said.

Grissom turned to him. "How did he get Sara to say what he wanted?"

"I found lots of outtakes, including visuals of him giving her the potassium chloride injections," Archie said. "He kept urging her to say things, to tell you how she felt about you, to talk to the rest of us on the team. He led her where he wanted her to go, then he extracted the material that best suited his needs. Back in his lab, he added in the blood and broken bones, and his own voice, and it looked and sounded totally real."

Catherine had doubts. "I still don't see Lionel Dell pulling off something like this."

"Look at it this way Catherine," Archie said. "All he was doing was taking existing legitimate video and fooling with the images and sounds. It's not a big deal. Now if he'd been creating an intergalactic space war with photon torpedoes and phaser cannon and exploding light ships, well, the computers could do it, but it would've been a stretch for Lionel. It would involve advanced skill sets he probably doesn't have. What I want to know is, where'd he get the money? This stuff isn't cheap. I'd love to have it for the lab."

"We might be able to arrange that when the case is over," Ecklie said.

"Meanwhile, we'll go for his bank accounts," Brass said.

As the meeting broke up, Hodges moved close to Grissom, a smirk on his face. Grissom steeled himself.

"I'll bet it didn't escape you, partner, that we've got a Dell working on a Mac," Hodges said, giggling.

Grissom looked at him with perfect disdain. "You know, Hodges, irony is a beautiful thing. But your timing sucks."

**x x x x x x x**

Grissom extricated himself from Hodges and headed straight for Sara's room. An orderly was just finishing a change of sheets, and a lab tech was poised to draw blood.

"How is she?" he asked the lab tech.

"I don't know, Sir," she replied. "You should ask one of the nurses. She hasn't moved since I came in a few minutes ago."

Grissom scraped his hands over his face and waited impatiently until everyone finished. Then he moved to Sara's bed.

His fingers traced the slight frown lines in her forehead, swept a stray strand of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear.

His fingertips caressed the side of her face, and he bent to kiss her gently.

He willed her to wake up.

"Hello, beautiful," he said.

"Hello, handsome," she replied. "Whereya been?"

He smiled broadly and grabbed her hand.

"You're awake!" he said, gleefully stating the obvious. "How do you feel?"

"Sore. A little nauseous. Confused. Definitely confused. How badly am I hurt?"

"Not bad at all," he said. "You're going to be fine."

"Really? But he hit me, over and over…"

He caressed her check as best he could through the bandages encasing his palms. He laid a finger gently over her lips to quiet her.

"You're fine," he said. "Honest."

He could see in her brown eyes that she didn't completely believe him.

"It's a long story," he said. "I'll tell you everything when you're feeling better."

**x x x x x x x**

She saw his face slowly lose its joy, his eyes go to full pain mode. If she didn't know Grissom never cried, she would have sworn his eyes glistened.

"Gil?"

He shook his head and let it fall to his chest. She reached a hand to his, startled by the bandages. But she had more immediate questions.

"You have to tell me the truth. What happened?"

"I thought I'd lost you. I watched … I watched y-y-you die. I couldn't find you. I couldn't reach you in time. I died with you."

He had tripped back in time.

"I remember sitting on the floor in the lab and thinking I'd never see you smile again, never feel your breath on my neck again, never …"

She laid a hand on his thigh.

"Don't, Gil. Don't go there. I'm here. You tell me I'm fine. We're moving on to a new life. We have forever together. No more violence. No more death. Just us. You and me. Living like normal people."

She could tell she wasn't reaching him.

She moved over to the far side of the bed.

"Come here. Beside me," she said.

She moved the sheet out of the way.

He slipped out of his shoes. He climbed onto her bed.

They lay on their sides, facing one another.

He reached out and enveloped her with his arms, pulled her tight against his chest. She mirrored the gesture.

He laid his head on her shoulder, nested against her neck.

He began to tremble.

His arms and chest at first. Soon his whole body.

She held him tight and whispered to him over and over, "I'm here. I'm alive. I love you. I always will."

The trembling subsided.

His breathing smoothed out.

At long last, he slept.


	21. Chapter 21

**A/N: **For those of you who notice this came early, I had to do that. I have a meeting Friday morning that starts at 6:30 a.m., and it's a half hour from my home, so with the dog to tend to, I need to be up by 4, which is about five hours from now. I won't have time to deal with this tomorrow. Thanks.

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 21**

**87 HOURS LATER . . .**

They had been ordered to remain inside the safe-house in Henderson. Anything they needed would be brought to them. They were not to go out under any circumstances.

They'd even been forced to send Hank to the dog sitter so they wouldn't have to walk him.

Their food was brought in. Reading material. Reports on the Lionel Dell investigation.

Visitors were not allowed.

It's not going to last long, they were promised.

Grissom and Sara found the first few days very pleasant. They slept as long as they wanted, whenever they wanted. They played board games, read, watched movies and DVDs of old television shows.

Grissom had told Sara in full detail – because she had demanded it – about the Lionel Dell experience from his point of view. She had described it from hers. Once it was on the table, they thought they would be able to move past it.

They believed that right up to 3:12 a.m. of their third day in Henderson. The hour of Grissom's nightmare.

He had dreamed each previous night following Sara's abduction and beating, but on each occasion he'd wakened himself and been able to calm himself without disturbing her.

This night, his subconscious took him deep into hell and wasn't about to let him out.

In this nightmare, the weapons, the blood and the broken bones were real. The clubbings came more frequently, and Grissom was in the cage with Sara. He watched as Dell methodically attempted to crush every bone in her body, starting with the extremities and working in. Grissom was allowed to hold Sara between beatings, and each time he lifted her, her body had lost more of its cohesiveness. She told him she wanted to die, that she was trying to die, but she couldn't make it happen.

Her words crushed his spirit as completely as Lionel Dell crushed her body.

He heard her calling his name, her voice too strong to be coming from the Sara in his nightmare. He wanted to follow the voice. He knew it might free him from the cage. But he couldn't leave the Sara in his arms, the beaten Sara, who needed him too much.

**x x x x x x x**

Sara didn't want to shake Grissom too hard for fear of injuring his eye, but he was thrashing so violently she feared he would do damage to himself. She had to bring him awake.

"Gil! Gil! Wake up!" Her voice started low, but the volume increased as her anxiety for him grew. Apparently, she was yelling loud enough now that the guards below her window could hear. Two of them entered the house and knocked on the bedroom door.

"Mrs. Grisson, are you okay? Is everything okay in there?"

"Call an ambulance," she said. "My husband is having a nightmare. I can't wake him up."

Dr. Richard Jennings was waiting for them in the emergency room. He checked Grissom's vital signs and ordered medication.

"It might simply be a panic attack, but his blood pressure is very high, he's suffering palpitations, sweats and tremors," Jennings told Sara. "I've ordered some beta blockers to quiet him, then we'll try to wake him again. We had to restrain him." He paused before asking, "Was this a nightmare?"

She nodded.

"I know this isn't what you want to hear, but it's entirely possible, probable even, that this will continue to happen for a while. He should see someone. Get some professional counseling. There's no shame in it. Our brains didn't evolve to take the kind of emotional, psychological pounding this incident created."

"He told me his eye surgeon suggested the same thing," Sara said.

"And?"

"He says he's considering it."

"Exactly what I would expect from him," Jennings said. "A debate stopper. 'I'll think about it. Stop talking about it.' But he never gets around to it. Sara, this time he has to. You might have to force the issue."

"I will," she said.

"Okay, I'm going to let him rest for a while, then we'll reassess."

"Could I sit with him?"

"Sure. Come on."

**x x x x x x x**

Lionel Dell couldn't believe his luck. He knew if he staked out Desert Palm Hospital long enough Grissom or Sidle would show up. A story in one of the local papers said Grissom was scheduled for additional eye surgery. It also said the two were living under police guard at an undisclosed location pending the apprehension of Lionel Dell.

Him.

So all he had to do was stake out the hospital in a nondescript vehicle, and when they left, he would follow them right to the place of their deaths.

Dell was amazed at what the authorities didn't think of. He knew the Grissoms wouldn't come and go from Desert Palm through the normal doorways. When you want to keep someone's presence at the hospital a secret, you move him through the ER or the Staff Entrance. That's what they did when they brought Natalie in for a psych evaluation, took her in through the ER on a gurney and out through the Staff Entrance. So he parked his borrowed Ford Focus where he could keep an eye on both.

And there they were. Grissom being pulled out of an ambulance that rolled up to the ER, Sidle emerging from a black four-door sedan that pulled up beside it, trailed by a police cruiser.

So Grissom was having problems. Probably not a heart attack or stroke. He was conscious and appeared to be struggling with his rescuers. Whatever. Dell was a patient man. If Grissom went in, Grissom would come out. Eventually.

All he had to do then was put his little car in gear and follow the entourage, and it would lead him right to their undisclosed location.

He couldn't believe how much he loved the next part of his plan.

**x x x x x x x**

While Dell waited, he took stock of the Ford Focus he was driving. Already his missed his Harley. But the man in Kingman who'd bought it had been after Dell to sell it for two years. His offer kept going up. Faced with the expense of the CGI computers and software, Dell decided to finance his project with the proceeds of the sale of the bike. He actually had cash left over.

As part of the deal, he would borrow the buyer's car for a week or two. The buyer was more than happy to oblige. He was going to be too busy learning to ride his new bike to think about the car.

Dell also wanted to dump the bike because the police would be looking for it. If they found it in Kingman, the buyer would be able to tell them Dell had his Ford Focus, but Dell used it so little, the chance of getting caught in it were remote.

He was wondering how he was going to close his eyes for a few minutes' rest and not miss Grissom's exit when he saw them emerge from the Staff Entrance: Grissom in the middle with Sara on his right and Jim Brass on his left. They weren't supporting him exactly, but hovering in case he needed help. Grissom got into the back seat of the black sedan. Sara ran around to the other side and got in beside him. Brass drove. The police car trailed.

Dell trailed the police car.

The sun was coming up, so it was easy to keep the light bar in sight, which allowed Dell to fall back to a good, safe distance. He wouldn't be spotted. They took surface streets south to the suburb of Henderson, and pulled into the driveway of a modest but neat home in a development of modest, neat homes. The police unit sat by the curb. Brass pulled into the driveway and followed Grissom and Sidle inside. Dell slowed only enough to get the address, then moved away and went to the seedy motel where he'd rented a room by the week.

He would sleep.

**x x x x x x x**

"You should try to sleep," Sara said when they reentered the house.

"I think I'll just stretch out on the couch," he said. "Change of venue might help."

He didn't bother to undress, just kicked off his shoes and sank onto his back.

"You should go back to bed," he told her.

"I've had enough sleep," she said. "Maybe I'll read for a while."

He sighed. "Sara, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

She knelt beside him and massaged his temples. He smiled and moaned in comfort.

"You have nothing to apologize for. Just relax."

"Okay."

"How about a blanket?" Sara asked.

He nodded and thanked her.

When she returned with the comforter, he was sleeping.

**x x x x x x x**

He awoke to the smell of something good cooking.

He sat up and started to rub his eyes, remembered, and rubbed only one.

He'd forgotten to put the plastic cap over his eye again.

"That smells wonderful," he said.

"Hi, sleepyhead," she said, turning from the stove with a Sara grin on her face. "How are you feeling?"

"Better. Rested. What are you making?"

"Brunswick stew."

"Really? I love your Brunswick stew."

"I know," she said, her voice husky.

The sound of it went straight where she'd aimed it.

"Bathroom," he said. "Be back in a minute."

He was just finishing with the toothbrush when she came in behind him.

"Could you help me change the bandages?" he asked.

"In a minute," she said. "Maybe longer."

He glanced in the mirror and their eyes made contact. The electricity that passed between them made both of them shudder.

She ran her hands under his arms and around his waist.

She started moving her lips softly across the back of his neck.

"Oh my God," he whispered. "I'll give six months to cut that out."

"If we're going to be that long, I'd better turn down the fire under the stew."

He turned to face her. "You are not leaving this room," he said.

"The bathroom? We gonna do it on the sink?"

He glanced at the sink.

"We'd better move to the bedroom."

She put him up against a wall and told him to close his eyes and relax.

"Sara," he said, "are you sure you feel well enough for this? Those bruises have to still hurt."

"In a little while, you can kiss each one and make them better."

"There's another thing. I'm not going to be able to brace myself with my hands. We might have to be a little inventive."

"It isn't your hands I'm concerned with," she said. "And I like inventive." She ran a hand up and down over his enclosed cock and thrilled to hear him moan. "Now are you going to shut up and let me invent?"

He didn't even try to respond.

She pulled his t-shirt up over his head and dropped it to the floor.

She thumbed open the button at the waist of his jeans. She pressed his zipper pull lightly into the flesh of his penis and dragged it down, the vibration of the parting teeth raking his arousal and making every nerve in his body dance.

By the time the zipper was down, his jeans could not have contained him.

She dropped the denim to the floor, and he stepped out of it.

She stood and began using her tongue, her teeth and her lips on his most sensitive places, making sweet love to his neck, his ears, the hollow of his throat, his chest and his nipples. She spent a long time there, then dragged her tongue down his abdomen, pausing to lick at his navel and to lip chew on his abdomen beneath.

On her knees again now, she started on his thighs and worked to his inner thighs. She lifted his boxers over his erection and let them drop.

She lapped and sucked at his balls, trying to take them one at a time all the way into her mouth. Each time she tried, she moaned deeply. The rough vibrations of her vocal chord brought sounds of pure pleasure from him and made his cock twitch.

"Something else is trying to get my attention," she said.

He wasn't listening. He had his head back against the wall and was busy entangling the exposed length of his fingers in her hair.

She swirled her tongue around the head of his penis, dipping it slightly into the slit at the tip.

At the same time she grabbed his ass and pulled her to him. She pulled the globes apart gently and inserted a middle finger just inside his opening. His eyes went wide and his hips bucked hard, carrying his erection deep into Sara's throat, exactly what she wanted.

She began to pump him with her mouth and tease him with her finger, and it was driving him hard toward an orgasm.

"God, Honey, I can't hold off much longer."

She didn't even begin to let up on him.

She pumped and teased and pumped and teased until he came in a series of earthquake orgasms that had to rank among the most powerful he'd ever experienced. The aftershocks lasted a full minute and left him sweat soaked and exhausted.

She cleaned him with her tongue, and then rose to kiss him, so he could taste himself on her. The passion she showed him actually began a new arousal for him, albeit slower than the first.

"Oooh," she said when she felt his penis begin a slow climb up her thigh again. "Horny today, aren't we?"

"I know I am." He stroked her thighs and probed her vulva with his right fingers. "It would appear that you are not immune to the pheromones permeating the room, either, my dear."

"Yeah, and we're not even on the bed yet."

"Do you want to lie on that bed?" he asked. "It has a bit of a bad history."

"Then we need to write a new history."

**x x x x x x x**

He had brought her to two swift, crashing orgasms using only his fingertips and his mouth, but he could tell she wasn't sated. Nor was he.

As they lay together among twisted sheets overlaying the sweat of his nightmare with the sweat of their passion, they played with one another, tasting and touching and loving everything, but slowly, as lovers more than sex-starved rabbits.

When both were ready, Sara whispered to Gil.

"I can help put you inside me, and it would be my honor and pleasure to do so. But maybe you'd like to try something we've never done."

"Is there something we've never done?"

"Oh, darling, in infinite numbers."

"You're in charge today," he said. "Dealer's choice."

"Scoot down about a third of the way on the mattress," she said. "Lie on your back and put two pillows under your head."

"Then what?"

"You'll know it when you feel it."

He cocked an eyebrow at her.

"No worries," she said. "It won't hurt. I promise."

He did as she asked, and as soon as she was assured he was comfortable, she stretched out on top of him, but in the opposite direction, head toward the bottom of the bed."

"Ah," he said in recognition. "I actually have thought about suggesting this."

"Are you still comfortable?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah," he said.

"Gentleman, start your engine."

It was clear almost immediately that shared, simultaneous oral sex would be part of their lives forever. The impact of giving and getting at the same time heightened the sensation 10-fold.

Grissom began to feel the tension building first, and instinctively increased his activity for Sara, sucking her clit between his lips, probing hard and deep into her vagina with his tongue, finding sensitive, electric spots he'd never probed before.

Sara worked hard at the underside of Grissom's erection. She licked, she sucked, she bit lightly. Then his balls got the same treatment, and the head of his cock, and then his entire erection. While her mouth urged his penis to greater and greater size and tension, her hands worked his testicles, just roughly enough.

Both began writhing, each trying to hold off for a signal from the other.

Sara had been unable to speak. She climaxed again, her vaginal walls constricting around Grissom's tongue, pulling it deeper with every spasm until he thought she might rip it out at the roots. But the delicious sensation was all it took to drive him to his own orgasm, and it was another magnificent one.

They remained like that for several minutes, until heart rates and breathing slowed, and someone generated enough energy to speak.

Grissom was first.

"I think I could sleep here now," he said.

"We really should change the sheets first," she said.

"Nah," he said. "These sheets have us on them. The hopes and expectations for our future together. I'd like to sleep with them for a while."

They gathered each other in a tangle of arms and legs and dozed off, unaware that 480 feet behind the house, on a hillock of dirt and rock, they were being watched through a spotting scope held tightly in the hands of Lionel Dell.


	22. Chapter 22

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 22**

**EIGHT DAYS LATER . . .**

The plan was formulated in Lionel Dell's mind in a day, the equipment necessary procured and assembled within a few days more. Dell spent a part of every day on the hillock, observing the Grissoms, observing the protection, the intervals at which the perimeter was checked, the way the house's security was checked. Each time he watched the process, he became increasingly convinced his plan was foolproof. He'd even worked out how, on the day he did the deed, he would approach the house, to get within a ring of certainty that the plan would work.

His tools had an outside range of 480 feet, exactly the distance from the hillock to the house. But as he practiced for his finale, Dell realized that while the weapon worked from 480 feet, his skill level made the distance iffy.

However, there was a boulder of sufficient size to conceal him 152 feet behind the house. His practice sessions showed him he was nearly dead perfect from that distance.

He knew when he would make his move. And he would wait as long as he needed to. The longer the better in fact. Every day of no action brought the Grissoms and their guards closer to complacency. A little closer to the point where the element of surprise would turn to his favor.

He would use the time to practice.

And to fanaticize about the end game.

**12 DAYS LATER . . .**

Owen Richland rolled his stool back from the eye equipment and smiled.

"Very good, Gil. You're doing great. The retina is holding and the cornea continues to heal."

"But I'm still getting pretty bad headaches," Grissom said.

"Because the two eyes don't work together. I think it's about time we changed that."

Grissom was thrilled to hear it.

"Replace the lens?"

"Yep. How's tomorrow morning sound?"

Grissom smiled widely. "Absolutely."

"Okay, the procedure itself will take about 10 to 15 minutes," he said. "The eye will be deadened, you will be mildly sedated, and we'll get it over. There should be no pain before, during or after. And within hours of the operation, you'll be two-eyed again. You need to understand that while this is low-risk surgery, there is no such thing as no-risk surgery."

"I know, and I still want to do it," Grissom said.

"Then we'll see you here tomorrow at 8 a.m. Don't eat or drink anything after 10 tonight."

"Sara's going to insist on coming," he said. "Our jailers wouldn't let her come for the exams, but they're not going to be able to stop her tomorrow."

"She's more than welcome. She can be with you right up to the minute we bring you back to prep you and then again as soon as you're done. There's no recovery room involved. You're in. You're out. You're home. How are your hands, by the way?"

"Also healing well," Grissom said. "Bandages off. Stitches out. They're stiff, but I'm doing some physical therapy at home, and the range of motion is returning. It's good to be getting back to the old me."

**13 DAYS LATER . . .**

Dell knew the day of Grissom's surgery would begin early in the morning, so he made certain each weekday that his borrowed car was well-concealed and that he was on his hillock before dawn, ready to move.

When he saw the Grissom's leave their safehouse together at 7:30 that morning, he flushed with anticipation. He didn't know for certain they were headed for Grissom's eye surgery, but it didn't matter. It was the first time they'd been out of the house together since he'd discovered their location. And that's what he needed, them gone together. He could elude the perimeter checks as he slipped forward to his new location, but he couldn't risk Grissom or Sidle seeing his movements from within the house.

When they had driven off under police escort, and the security crew began a meeting in the front yard, it was time for Dell to position himself for the final offensive. He picked up his Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun and the duffel bag and began his slow descent to his new hiding place.

**x x x x x x x**

Sara held Grissom's hand tightly in the surgical waiting room.

He looked at her and smiled.

"There's nothing to worry about," he said. "This procedure is done tens of thousands of times a year in this country."

"But not on my husband," she said. "I'm nervous. Get over it."

He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips as a surgical assistant came through the door.

"Dr. Grissom, we're ready for you."

He got up and winked at Sara.

"I'll be right back," he said.

They put him on a gurney fully dressed, hadn't even asked him to take off his shoes. The anesthesiologist put an IV in the back of his left hand. They put drops in his eye to deaden it. They flushed the eye and put a salve in it. None of it was uncomfortable. The flush was cold, and he wondered aloud why he could feel temperature if his eye had been deadened. The nurse explained that the deadening blocked pain, but he would still feel pressure and temperature.

He was wheeled into surgery. The doctor – he assumed it was Owen Richland – put a scapula in his eye to keep the lids open. This is what had worried Grissom the most. The notion of keeping his eye open for 15 minutes was impossible. Now he understood they did it for him. They pulled up two stationary pillow devices to hold his head still during the procedure. He felt himself relax. He guessed something had been injected into his IV drip.

He saw movement. He thought he might have dozed. He thought a minute might have passed. He felt the scapula removed. He felt his eyes close. He slept.

"Wake up, Gil. Time to open your eyes."

It was Richland, and Grissom responded immediately.

When he focused, he could see Richland almost perfectly.

"It went very well," the doctor said. "You should take it easy for the rest of the day. I'll see you back here first thing tomorrow."

Grissom looked at the clock on the way. Sixteen minutes had passed since it all began.

He walked to the discharge side of the suite. He sat. He was offered coffee, juice and cookies. He took the coffee. It tasted good. A nurse gave him another cheap plastic zipper bag with instructions on the use of the contents. Then Sara was there. Beaming.

He looked at her and stood up, took her in his arms and pulled her tight.

"You look twice as beautiful with two good eyes," he said.

**x x x x x x x**

Grissom did as ordered and took it easy. He took a nap. When he got up, he couldn't resist testing his eyes. He sat down to read and groaned happily with surprise.

"It's good?" Sara asked, standing behind him and massaging his shoulders.

"It's just great," he said. "I might never have to wear glasses again."

"Really?"

"Yeah, my correction was for my left eye. The right eye was never anything but uncorrected optical glass. Now I don't need anything for my left eye, either. Maybe something good came of all this."

That reminded him that "all this" wasn't over as long as Lionel Dell was a free man.

He glanced at Sara and realized she was thinking the same thing.

His mood turned bleak.

**x x x x x x x**

From his new vantage point, Dell watched Grissom and Sidle prepare for bed. The house went dark. It was his time.

The Mossberg 500 shotgun was loaded and ready. A shell sat in the chamber, and the wooden stick rested against the ammunition. The stick extended the length of the barrel and ended in an incendiary grenade an inch beyond the muzzle.

Two more stick-mounted grenades sat at his feet. One was another incendiary device. The next was a fragmentation grenade.

All of this was so easy to build for someone with the knowledge to use the Internet.

The plan was simple. Put two incendiary grenades through the bedroom window to start a flash fire. Follow with a fragmentation grenade to cut the couple to shreds as they try to escape the flames. It would be over in seconds, and he would escape in the confusion that followed.

If they suspected him, and they would, they would look for his motorcycle. A beat-up old Ford Focus wouldn't draw a second glance.


	23. Chapter 23

**DYING**

**By ProWriter11**

**Chapter 23 and Epilogue**

Grissom had been lying in bed for more than an hour, unable to sleep. The stress of waiting for the other shoe to drop was unbearable.

Ecklie believed Dell was on the run and probably out of Nevada by now.

Brass and Grissom knew better.

Brass wasn't happy about the large open area behind the safe house. It was definitely a hole in the security. But he couldn't keep a helicopter up to cover it. The FAA had regulations about how low aircraft could fly over a populated area. If the chopper went high enough to suit the FAA, it entered an MOA, a military operations area, where civilian flights were forbidden. Nellis AFB had given permission for intrusions periodically, but the permission carried so many restrictions it was essentially worthless.

So the units on the ground were instructed to keep careful watch on the rear of the house, and they did. But Dell was cautious and better prepared.

Grissom, finally fell into that peaceful region between waking and sleeping, had just turned over to put an arm around his sleeping wife when the plastic cover taped over his eye hit the pillow and startled him awake. He whispered a curse. A moment later he heard a thunderous blast, followed by the shattering of a bedroom window.

Something sailed past his head and hit the opposite wall, exploding into a firestorm.

It was followed almost immediately by a second blast and a second missile that exploded against Sara's side of the bed. The roar of the flames was deafening.

"Sara!"

He screamed at her as he pulled her away from the tongues of fire lapping at her bedding.

She came full awake.

"Oh, my God," she said.

The heat of the flames engulfed them, and the smoke thickened quickly.

Grissom put his mouth against Sara's ear.

"On the floor, as low as you can go," he shouted. "Crawl for the door."

They had just dropped when a third explosion shattered the room. Grissom immediately covered Sara with his body, hearing what sounded like insects buzzing his head.

Something hit him in the right side, under the rib cage, and he squeezed his eyes against the pain. Something else hit him in the upper arm.

Sara grunted.

"My leg," she said.

Grissom took stock of their situation. Fire had now blocked the bedroom door and was licking at the ceiling. There was no chance of getting to the window through which the grenades had come. The bed blocked it, and the bed was fully engaged in flames.

The second window was the only choice. Although the advance of the flames threatened to block it, too, it provided the best chance for escape if Grissom could pick up Sara and simply hurl both of them through the fire and the glass.

He didn't like the odds.

He didn't have a choice.

"Sara, don't fight me. I'm going to pick you up. I want you to try to hold your breath."

"Okay," she said.

He lifted her. Her slight weight made it easy, but the wounds in his side and arm had weakened him. That was a problem. He had only once chance to crash through the glass. If they bounced off back into the room, they were doomed.

He heard the shouts of would-be rescuers on the far side of the door. He couldn't wait for them.

He stood, immediately inhaling searing heat and smoke.

He gathered every ounce of strength he had and leaped at the window.

The flames licked at their night clothes.

It singed their hair.

It burned their skin.

The shards of breaking glass lacerated them.

The hard landing on the ground outside pounded the breath from them.

Sara's body had hit the window first and was slammed under Grissom's when they hit the ground. It stunned her unconscious.

But they were alive.

In the noise of the inferno and the rescue effort inside, nobody heard them go through the window.

The only person who saw them and realized they were still breathing was Lionel Dell, and he had four shells left in the Mossberg.

**x x x x x x x**

Dell reached them seconds after their escape. Grissom was on his hands and knees, bleeding and coughing. Sara lay still beside him.

It was ingrained in Dell that killing Sara was paramount. It's what Natalie wanted. He ran at her with the Mossberg aimed at her head.

With a gargantuan effort, Grissom heaved himself at Dell, and they both went to the ground.

Both had two hands on the shotgun.

Dell had the all-important control of the trigger.

They rolled on the ground.

Dell got the weapon horizontal to Grissom's neck and put all his weight behind it, trying to crush Grissom's larynx. Breathing through damaged lungs and countering Dell's strength with a wounded arm and a growing weakness due to blood loss proved impossible. Grissom was fast losing the battle.

Then Sara was there in a singed nightshirt, soot on her face and blood pouring from somewhere high on her right thigh.

She bent down and tried to pull Dell off Grissom, but made little headway.

She kicked him twice in the ribs, hard with the ball of her foot, and he yielded enough to let Grissom push him away.

Either Dell moved off Grissom deliberately, or he planned to take advantage of a sudden opportunity. The momentum of his roll to the ground put the muzzle of the shotgun squarely on Sara.

Grissom saw what was coming and screamed a warning. The shotgun discharged and Sara went to the ground.

"Sara!" Grissom screamed.

"Okay," she said. "Missed."

He allowed himself a moment to feel the relief. "Thank God," he whispered.

"Get help," he said, coughing hard.

"I can't leave."

"You've got to get help."

She turned and sprinted for the front of the house. In the distance, Grissom heard the sirens of responding fire equipment.

Dell must have heard them, too, because he had redoubled his efforts.

As Grissom shouted instructions to Sara, he struggled to twist the shotgun from Dell's hands. Dell won that struggle and quickly clubbed Grissom with the stock.

Grissom's world exploded. When it returned it was out of focus. Grissom wondered if his eye had been damaged. The blow to the head would have killed him had Dell been able to get any leverage behind it.

The shotgun was now pinned between them. The stock was beside Grissom's bloodied head, the muzzle pointed down.

Dell seemed intent on eviscerating Grissom with his next shot.

Sara was limping back toward the side of the house with Brass and three police officers when they heard the shotgun blast.

Sara stopped and stared in horror.

Both men lay still, Dell still on top of Grissom.

"No," she whimpered.

She saw Dell move first and her chest heaved.

Dell rolled off Grissom.

The flashlights wielded by the cops found blood everywhere.

Dell's eyes were open.

Grissom's were closed.

Sara couldn't see her husband breathing.

She dropped to her knees at his side.

She ran a hand gently over his face.

"Gil, please. Come on, Gris."

"Get the medics here now," Brass ordered the officers. He kicked the Mossberg well away from Dell.

Dell stirred.

"Help me," he said.

"Shut up," Brass told him.

Grissom opened his eyes. He looked at Sara.

"Where are you hit?" she said.

"I'm not," he said. "At least I don't think I am. Blacked out for a minute."

Sara borrowed a flashlight from one of the cops and examined Grissom. He was bleeding from a head wound. Blood flowed freely from his right ribcage area and his upper right arm. There was some blood on his left thigh from what appeared to be a small puncture wound.

She looked over at Dell.

A massive blood pool swam at his right thigh.

Sara recognized the signs of bleeding from a severed femoral artery.

"Somebody should tourniquet that," she said.

"No point," Brass said. "He's died a few seconds ago."

"Dell's dead?" Grissom asked, his voice weak.

Sara coughed and nodded.

"It's over," she said.

Grissom's world went black.

**16 DAYS LATER (Epilogue)**

Sara was released from the hospital after a day. She was recovering well from her fragmentation injury, smoke inhalation and several small burns.

Grissom stayed for three days, on oxygen. Two shards of the fragmentation grenade were pulled from his arm and rib cage. Fortunately, the second one, which could have rattled around in his chest doing all sorts of mischief, had been content to stop in the first layer of muscle.

The buckshot pellet that caught him in the leg had lodged near his femoral artery. But not in it. The muzzle blast had burned him.

His lungs and chest hurt.

Owen Richland had given up.

"Didn't I tell you to take it easy?" he said when he looked in on his eye patient.

"I did for about nine hours," Grissom said, coughing.

"Oh, well then, what am I complaining about?"

"How did the eye hold up?"

"It fine," Richland said. "You're incorrigible."

Grissom could tolerate all the abuse knowing Dell was gone and Sara was safe.

Although Sara had been discharged, she insisted on staying with her husband in his room until he could go home.

As Grissom was getting ready to leave on the third day, Richard Jennings came by. Jennings kissed Sara's forehead and gently shook Grissom's hand.

"Am I to understand that the two of you are getting out of Dodge?" he said.

"I think we've left enough blood in Clark County," Sara said.

"Too bad," Jennings replied. "One more injury combo for the two of you and we could have built a new surgical wing on the hospital. I was counting on it."

"Could we just make a donation?" Grissom said with a smile.

Jennings grew serious. After shepherding these two through a myriad of encounters with bad guys, he was pleased they were moving onto a quieter, safer life.

"It's been an honor," he said. "Good luck."

**x x x x x x x**

It felt good to be back in their own home, even if they were preparing to leave it.

The sheets were clean.

Hank was sprawled happily at the bottom of the mattress.

Gil had Sara in his arms.

Lionel Dell was dead.

"You think he was really married to Natalie?" Sara asked.

"No one has found a record of a marriage certificate."

"It could have been common-law."

"Ummmm."

She raised up on an elbow and looked at him.

"You okay?"

"Fine."

"Really?"

He glanced away.

"That's what I thought. Talk to me."

He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

She put her hand on his bare chest and rubbed gently. "Can you tell me what's bothering you?"

"Not really something I want to discuss."

"You mean what it's like to kill somebody?"

He nodded. "Something like that."

"You saved my life," she said. "You saved your own life."

"I know."

"Doesn't help?"

"A man's still dead by my hand."

"You feel that you killed him?"

He nodded. "We both had a finger on the trigger. When he realized the gun was pointed more at him than me, he tried to pull both of us away. When he moved his finger, I pulled. I knew what I was doing. It wasn't an accident."

"But it was self defense."

"Somehow that doesn't help."

She reached over and caressed his cheek. She kissed his closed eyes softly.

"Does that help?"

"Ummmmm."

"Can you get past it?" Sara asked.

"Eventually. Probably."

She moved over him and kissed him lightly on the neck, in the hollow of his throat, on his cheeks, on the mouth. She laid her head on his shoulder.

"I'll never get over that," he said.

Grissom felt Sara's smile spread across his skin. The sensation reached him.

Sara lifted her head.

"You lie there and relax," she said. "I'll give you a better memory."

For the next 10 minutes she worked him over with the lightest possible touch from her lips. She feathered them over his face, his neck, his shoulders, chest, abdomen. She spent extra time on his thighs and stopped before reaching his groin.

The lightest of touches for so long – he called them whispers of a promise – had him fully aroused. Sara managed to cut through everything, the exhaustion, the pain, the guilt and move him toward oblivion.

"Why did you stop?" he asked.

"I figured you'd had enough," she said.

He opened one eye and gave her a reproving look. It was the good eye, so she knew he meant it.

"Well, then, I guess I'll have to start all over again."

"Take it in reverse this time."

She tapped her finger on the slit at the tip of cock, and it twitched.

"Naughty boy," she said.

"I try," he said with a blissful smile on his lips.

She started on the slit, dipping her tongue in to gather the pre-cum that seeped from him. She spread it around the head as if she were icing a cake with her tongue. Again, no pressure. Just a light, light touch.

He moaned and moved his hips, overcome with his passion.

When he was writhing sufficiently beneath her, she pursed her lips and blew a stream of cool air right at the slit.

"Oh, god, Sara. Please keep going."

She had no intention of stopping.

She began the same game with his balls. Lapping lightly, blowing lightly. She felt them draw up. He bucked. She stopped. She wasn't ready for him to come. She sensed he wasn't ready, either.

She took a short break.

"Thank you," he whispered. "For slowing it down."

She gave him half a minute, which she filled by kissing his chest and biting at his nipples.

He sank his hands into her ass cheeks, but she pushed his hands away.

"My show," she said.

"But …"

"Uh-uh."

Then she was back on his cock.

She feathered her tongue up and down the hard ridge on the underside.

She took all of him in her mouth and down her throat, touching him only lightly with her tongue and lips.

He was insane now.

"I want to be in you," he said. "It's been too long."

She kissed him hard, then, and slid down onto him.

He put his hands behind her then and began kneading her ass cheeks again.

"Gris," she said.

He gave her a totally innocent, little-boy look.

"That isn't sex," he said. "I forgot to do my hand therapy today."

She laughed out loud at that.

"If you want to exercise your hands, try it in front of your cock, not behind."

He did. She rode his erection slowly as he played with her clit.

"God, you're so big and so hard," she said.

"Let's see if you can take any more," he said.

He slipped one, then two of his fingers into her vagina, so the fingers that massaged her worked in perfect concert with the cock making love to her. Every erotic place in her was covered by one of his moving parts. Out of her, too. He used his other hand on her clit.

"Jesus, fucking … I don't believe that, Gil. Oh, god, I am so coming."

He was close, too. But he knew the sensation would grow with every second they could wait.

"Hold it as long as you can, Sara," he said. "Feel the excitement build."

"If it builds any more, it's going to fucking kill me," she said.

He smiled. "Hold. Hold."

She tried.

He tried.

They just couldn't any more.

She climaxed first, her vaginal muscles spasming hard against his cock and his fingers, her clit dancing in his hand.

He followed, just as hard, and the sensations for each of them just kept pounding their bodies.

The aftershocks were as big as some orgasms.

Sara was practically sobbing with the intensity of the feelings.

Grissom was struck mute by them.

As long as anything of him was left inside of her, Sara was determined not to move. When she finally had no choice, she slid down his sweat-slicked skin to lie on top of him.

She dipped her fingers between her legs and brought up a mixture of the proof of their pleasure.

She licked at the fingers for a moment, and then offered them to Grissom.

He took them in his mouth down to the knuckles, and she finger-fucked his mouth until he had cleaned her.

"You really are the naughty one," he said.

"You said once the only unnatural sex is the absence of sex. So what we just did was perfectly natural."

"Hmmmm," he said. "It was natural, yes. But I don't think it was quite perfect. I think we need to practice some more."

"We have all the time in the world, Dr. Grissom."

"We do, Mrs. Grissom. Welcome to our new life."

**x x x x x x x **

**A/N: **Thanks to Flo1804 for a unique perspective on Grissom's hand therapy. j


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